Krieg - Forgotten Secrets/The Church
Review: Insane rage of Krieg at its rawest, with no introductory material or relenting in this surprisingly melodic demonic chant metal featuring raw-throated suicidal screams that leave no flesh hanging where vocal cords once stood, demonstrates concept at a level below the conscious mind. Riffs ride a rhythm until there is dissonance in continuation and then explode into fragmentary attacks that break by theme, with each theme mirrored in riff and vocals through the replicative pairing of ideas forming the basic concept of paradox behind the song. Unexpectedly brilliant is the fusion of death metal riffs with black metal melodic drive that gives some strength to verse passages.
War the metaphor, the topic eclipses karmic interaction for broader statements of being. As an epic emptiness engulfs humanity the ideals and raw will to commit such unbalanced and direct material to digits as expressed sensu Krieg exhibit the heroic ideals of prevalence of ideal against obstacles including the tedium of musical knowledge and refinement, forming something as vital as the hardcore underground once was through generation of logic in the unthinkable and vitally alienated music that this is. While some pieces wander into Wagnerian juxtaposition collage of emotional symbols, the strength of this music is in the heartpump of throbbing dissonance in framework boundaries within song structure through tone-centric progression establishment via relevance in rhythm, a knighthood of subconscious descent beneath the conscious and its discursive storm of dead static chaos flooding us with guilt, doubt, self-reflective ego paranoia and other traits of the Judeo-Christian thought empire.
Rawness in production and explosively minimal but gracefully, connectedly vital sound, pulses in the infrastructure of conflicts that form the alleys and catacombs of a switching system, directing the flow of user attention through a framework of ideas that strike or stimulate and catch us up in their evolutionary appeal. As most American black metal degenerates into footballish Motorhead/death metal fusion bands the growth of bands such as Krieg who maintain the raw edged dedication to minimalist and alienist riffing in the style of Profanatica, Beherit or Sarcofago is fuel for further growth in blackmetal, a framework of continuation upon which some surviving clueful can also build.