The malignancy seems to have entered remission. The sound is clearer and cleaner, the guitar tone of voice is less threatening with a more expressive feel, mixing in bonafied solos, and the steady strumming has reemerged re-imagined as an actual discernible rhythm. The overarching pacing has quickened to a crawl, and at times a trot. Disgust proves that scorn requires more energy expenditure. Are these changes for the better or just to be different?
Understated and simple drone has been supplanted by understated and simple drone more fully realized, and more likely to catch your fancy. By ‘your’ I mean that narrowly focused group of diehard backward leaning black metal aficionados. Memorability comes into play, like the opening riff on “Dead End”, simple, memorable, and a lead in to further development. Expanding on the filth of Hellhammer riffing is always desirable. The vocals are much unchanged, still a combination of shrieks from tortured and torturer, but now there is time to breath a bit between vocal lines. The drums now get to compete on a more equal footing volume wise and space wise, making for a more balanced delivery. The middle of “No Compassion, No Regrets” is as memorable as the Pink Panther theme, AE is really Henry Mancini’s illegitimate bastard step child. Tracks that fester the most in your gut are “Dead End”, and “The Sickness Within”. The track that will rot your brain is “No Compassion, No Regrets”, and the most jarring to your constitution is “The Beyond.”
Ultimately I’m convinced that what has happened is that the Avsky cancer is not in remission, it has instead spread so voraciously as to overwhelm the system. What we are witnessing is not a beating back of the Malignant values but those values unrestrained and unopposed.
They will need to find a new host body for album number four.
