For me, the most disappointing aspect of the post-1996 devolution of extreme metal from a series of artistic movements into a collection of social "scenes" has been the loss of the sense of possibility that once pervaded black and death metal. No longer do I look forward to new artists bringing a fresh creative perspective. The best I have been able to hope for over the past few years is that established artists like the Chasm or Graveland don't fall into the creative obsolescence that eventually overtakes almost all artists.
So I can say I was more than pleasantly surprised to find a work of true genius like The Luster of Pandemonium coming from a band formed after the turn of the millennium. What Crimson Massacre have achieved here is nothing less than the complete re-imagining of the entire "technical" death metal subgenre, turning away from the usual displays of self-important wankery and toward a new vision of the nightmarish postmodern fragmentation of reality delivered at the absolute fringe of instrumental possibility.
There is real innovation at the level of technique here, as phrases are rendered in almost ludicrously hyperextended form, with absurdly complex melodic, harmonic and rhythmic interplay flashing past almost too rapidly for the mind to adequately reassemble what the ear hears. Structurally, songs are built around a narrative framework, but that framework is twisted and disturbing, with the clarity and elegance of Burzum or The Chasm exchanged for paranoid pyrotechnics of an almost Pynchonian sort.
The real genius of The Luster of Pandemonium lies in its ambivalence. Beauty is always crushed by dissonance, dissonance is subsumed by beauty, and resolution is never reached. Passages reveal an inner logic, but the expected conclusion is always deferred. Even the eleven minute accoustic epic "The Hyperborean's Epitaph" builds toward a sublime climax only to collapse into a tortured, wailing death keen that never ends, but simply fades away. Crimson Massacre find in life an inherent meaninglessness, but rather than hiding from it, embrace the chance to build their own meaning from the fragments of possibility, and, in an act of supreme artistic courage, invite you to do the same with through their music.
10/10
So I can say I was more than pleasantly surprised to find a work of true genius like The Luster of Pandemonium coming from a band formed after the turn of the millennium. What Crimson Massacre have achieved here is nothing less than the complete re-imagining of the entire "technical" death metal subgenre, turning away from the usual displays of self-important wankery and toward a new vision of the nightmarish postmodern fragmentation of reality delivered at the absolute fringe of instrumental possibility.
There is real innovation at the level of technique here, as phrases are rendered in almost ludicrously hyperextended form, with absurdly complex melodic, harmonic and rhythmic interplay flashing past almost too rapidly for the mind to adequately reassemble what the ear hears. Structurally, songs are built around a narrative framework, but that framework is twisted and disturbing, with the clarity and elegance of Burzum or The Chasm exchanged for paranoid pyrotechnics of an almost Pynchonian sort.
The real genius of The Luster of Pandemonium lies in its ambivalence. Beauty is always crushed by dissonance, dissonance is subsumed by beauty, and resolution is never reached. Passages reveal an inner logic, but the expected conclusion is always deferred. Even the eleven minute accoustic epic "The Hyperborean's Epitaph" builds toward a sublime climax only to collapse into a tortured, wailing death keen that never ends, but simply fades away. Crimson Massacre find in life an inherent meaninglessness, but rather than hiding from it, embrace the chance to build their own meaning from the fragments of possibility, and, in an act of supreme artistic courage, invite you to do the same with through their music.
10/10
