at a loss 2
This is the life we chose, the life we lead. And there is only one guarantee: none of us will see Heaven.
I, uh, I don’t really know what to say about Abigor’s Fractal Possession. Beyond saying I’m sorry I ever doubted them (in the wake of the tepid Satanized), and ever having said anything snarky about this album. Fractal Possession is stunning and sui generis.
So, here’s a précis: Abigor. Austrian 3-piece with a revolving membership, no bass player, and the style of rattletrap pell-mell drumming that owes more to old grindcore (with its double-footed oatmeal box kick drums) than death metal’s bass-heavy rolling thunder. Possessed of a singular guitarist who can twist the whole chaotic mess around his finger and turn it into something grandiose and beautiful all by himself. Never make the same album twice. Fond of stealing samples from Dom & Roland, who probably stole them all from somebody else.
This album pushes all sorts of buttons for me, with its high-velocity prog/black/technical death metal warped into all kinds of strange shapes by the promiscuous borrowing from industrial, drum’n’bass and metalcore. Samples from Road to Perdition are juxtaposed with Abigor’s inimitable overdubbed twin-lead guitar pyrotechnics and random doomcore synth blats. And just to keep you on your toes, whenever the density peaks and it starts to blur into saminess, things ease up and get more melodic. It’s really quite something. I like it so much I had to listen to the whole thing all the way through twice, which I almost never do.
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I reviewed this album a while back: http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/lefthandpath/009-merlin-is-magic.htm
I found it technically interesting and cerebrally satisfying, though viscerally lacking. Probably just a matter of taste - I love that bass-heavy rolling thunder. But, for sure, this album stands out in a sea of derivative atavists.
I also have a lot of history with Abigor – John Gossard and Josh Smith of Weakling spent most of an evening at a party once telling me how they were the best thing to ever happen to black metal, and sometime after that I picked up Supreme Immortal Art, which is one of those albums that wormed its way into my head and never really left.
The lack of a bassist or any satisfying thump is something that bothers me too; Satanized didn’t have good enough songs to make up for the tepid bass, which is why I didn’t like it but have liked some, say Aeternus albums where the songwriting is also lackluster but the low-end is super heavy.