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As
if no one was waiting for this post black metal cocktail
to be concocted, Monument to Time End arrives with
enough expectations to make it a best seller despite its
quality. The thing is, there is no logic to this album
failing or sucking. After all, it features some of the
people who have recorded some of the albums that
have helped establish the underground as a movement of
the semi masses. If one was to deny Twilight’s potential
one would be nothing less of sacrilegious bastard, a
smack talking bitch in a world of stern kult believers,
perhaps, even a skeptic in a universe where everyone,
even the most ardent nihilist, is a believer of
distortion.
To give
Twilight a bit of background and some elemental info to the
uninformed, this combination integrates metal’s crème de la
crème, the jeez of the cookie monster, this is the We Are the
World team for Satan, the Brat Pack clad in black, so to speak.
But the Twilight of 2010 is hardly the Twilight of 2005. At the
time the project featured Xasthur’s Malefic, Nachtmystium's
Azentrius (or Blake Judd) and Draugar’s
Hildolf amongst others. By all accounts it was a purer black
metal experiment. Now, with only three fifths of the first line
up the range is far wider and the blackness is psychedelic. Back
for a second serving are Wrest from Leviathan, vocalist N
Imperial, who’s worked with Krieg amongst many others and Blake
Judd. Joining
them are Isis’ Aaron Turner, The
Atlas Moth’s Stavros Giannopolous and studio maverick Sanford
Parker in charge of the mini Moog and the special effects.
All those
familiar with the works of those above can get an accurate
picture of how the new Twilight sound like simply by imagining a
mixture of black metal with layers of shoegaze and plenty of
post metal hues brushed above. The collective result of Monument
to Time End is expected. That’s a good thing, by the way. With
all this talent there was almost no way to go wrong. There is so
much music here. It must have been a daring task just to
engineer this mammoth. Parker really had his hands full. The
songs are super charged with sound, guitars and more guitars,
screams and a plethora of psychedelic sounds, which gives
Monument to Time End certain sci fi allure.
The album comes
to an auspicious start with “the Cryptic Ascension”, a perfectly
placed song that in a way is emblematic of what the right forces
can do. It starts in a grueling mid tempo and it is extremely
detailed in its structure. Close attention is needed to catch it
all. The way Twilight play with the vocals is impressive, there
is the black metal and then there are the vocals that are almost
not there, harmonious and melodic without ever disrupting the
perverse moods. At almost ten minutes, this song couldn’t end
without smashing in full black metal force and so it speeds up.
In the
exhilarating “8,000 Years” the sounds bursts from the speakers.
It’s like a volume competition between metal guitars, painful
black metal screams and three or four dudes going crazy with
laser rays. And in “Red Fields” the lights are dimmed, half the
drums sound programmed, the vocals whisper and crackle and then
you explode. All you need is an Enya cameo and we can move to
the Orinoco.
“Convulsions in
Wells of Fever” is more like it. A direct black metal frontal
attack with perfect production and incredible racing guitars.
Monument to Time End is professional black metal. Stunning
closer “Negative Signal Omega” is the perfect last chapter. The
type of track that can’t be played live because it would have
most black metallers scratching their bald spots and milk
bellies. Like the album that contains it, it exercises its right
to experiment.
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