Krieg - Patrick Bateman
Review: In an age when imitators have turned three-chord rock into an aesthetically acceptable analogue for black metal music, distinctive voices are rare. From noisemasters Krieg, the latest release is a concept-based EP which resurrects the style of the earliest Krieg release, "Rise of the Imperial Hordes." At the time that first work emerged, black metal had expressed itself fully in lengthier, distinct melodies and a few bands were experimenting in making music that was fully ambient, or composed of few distinct entities but the gestalt of them taken together.
Often improvisational, it escaped the increasingly technical riffs of post-black metal black metal, recognizing correctly that when the focus is transferred from the composition of the whole to its elements, artistic meaning has been replaced by musical self-indulgence. Much of this fourteen minute terror of a recording is formed of barely discernible chords layered with fast erratic bass and distortion. As waves of slumbering low-end dissonance wash over the listener the vocals guide it with a poetry of off-the-cuff rage and prophetically, a desire to avoid coherent thought, conveying mood alone. Samples from a cinematic version of the work by Bret Easton Ellis introduce concept areas, but the music makes them tangible in expression.
As a result, the people who enjoy "nu-black metal" bands made of distinct recombinant riffs and clear, linear topics like "destroy all life" and "worship Satan" will be lost on this release, and it is best they avoid it. For others, it is best to appreciate "Patrick Bateman" as the background rumble of dischordant emotion birthing a lingering fragment of thought, one regarding an unformed and inexpressible animal truth lurking underneath organized human nature.