Totalselfhatred - Solitude

Band: Totalselfhatred

Title: Solitude

Label: Osmose Productions

Release Date: 27 April 2018

Country: Finland

Format reviewed: CD quality digital promo

Depressive black metal has always been a strange territory for me. The hybrids usually are not strong enough as the main species, and either they must be really good and well developed, or they are just dropped off from the herd. Furthermore nowadays there is clear and obvious diffusion in the styles, genres and subgenera into tens sub-sub categories which are even hard to describe. Depression had been a field for the most sad and slow death-doom bands 20-25 years ago just when the second wave of black metal has been so popular. So it was either slow, sad and painful, or it’s been…total black. Let’s add funeral doom and post-black wave to all this. Oh well…It really needs to be cooked well!

I’m once more thinking and calculating: summer is definitely NOT the time to drown into this particular style, especially when I’m writing for a depressive black metal band coming from the cold depths of Heslinki! With a band’s name like this and form my experience with their previous release for sure I knew what to expect, but what the heck!  

“Perseverance through adversity, creation through destruction, strength through pain. After years of waiting, skulking and lying near-dormant, Totalselfhatred has returned to the fray. We are here to present you five songs of our own particular brand of melancholic desolation in an audial form. Turn off the lights, wallow in the sweetness of reclusive negativity and let yourself float freely in the soothing stream of emotion that our epitome of Solitude will provide"

This announcement says a lot about the album and the band. “Solitude” comes seven years after bands second release “Apocalypse in your heart” released in 2011. With 5 songs and total running time of 41 minutes, in “Solitude” Totalselfhatred deliver another solid dose of despair and pain giving us just a solid reason to cut our veins. Depression, emotional crush and absolutely no light in the end of the tunnel. So painful and beautiful at once

Musically the album is good. Shoegazing, black gazing, melancholy. With really fantastic (!) slower parts, clean or acoustic guitars passages, keys. However the slower to mid passages suddenly explode into hyper nihilistic crescendo blasts and lethal doses of pain and screaming vocals. Typically for the genre of course. Honestly this was my main problem - these particular parts of the songs and vocals. First of all the blasts - some mistakes in drumming rhythm were noticed, and really the music and the overall atmosphere do loose with that painful screams and harsh vocals. Of course with songs like Solitude, Cold Numbness, Hollow, Black infinity, there can’t be anything else but pure misanthropy and screams for help of hopelessness. 

At the end of the day I’m trying to convince myself about which half of the song parts will prevail in my judgement. The slow and gloomy desperation or the painful cut-knife black crescendos which for me are weathering the veins of this record. I leave it to everybody to find the answer for him self. 6/10 Count Vlad

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6/10 - We may survive

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Filii Nigrantium Infernalium - Fellatrix

Band: Filii Nigrantium Infernalium

Titled: Fellatrix

Label: Osmose Productions 

Release Date: 25^th May 2018

Country: Portugal

Format reviewed: 320k/bit mp3

Filii Nigrantium Infernalium (referred to as FNI for simplicity) are well known in the home county’s underground scene, formed in 1992 from the ashes of Batcherion and a reshuffling of band members decided upon by Belathauzer. They have four full length albums, a few EP’s to their back catalogue and the curious claim to fame of participating in the adult film Phallusifer - The Immoral Code [NSFW], billed as the world’s first black metal porn movie.  For the most part in mainstream metal circles they are completely unknown, but such things are frivolous minutae as increasing fame often leads to a dilution of their music and art.

First of all, FNI’s ‘Fellatrix’ is a reworking of the demo album ‘Fellatrix Discordia Pantokrator’ released in 2005, something that clearly bothered Belathuzer as it appears (on the basis of the press release) he wasn’t entirely happy with the original recording and that it had much more to deliver. Clearly, FNI have been very busy as they’re due to unleash ‘Fellatrix’ onto the world; as well as the brand new studio album ‘Hóstia’ which is due on the same day:  Friday 25^th May 2018 – to be released on CD and limited edition cassette and vinyl runs.

So, for those who haven’t encountered FNI before – what’s to be expected of them musically? A huge. unique sound of their own making that’s best be described as ‘Party Black Metal’. Imagine, if you will – your neighbours are Impaled Nazarene and Venom, who had a vodka and Columbian marching powder fuelled jam session; stimulated by a weeks worth of binge listening to Bathory, Sodom, Motorhead and Judas Priest with Varg Vikernes tripping his tits off on vocals.  Yes, dear readers – it sounds completely insane but works beautifully. ‘Calypso’ kicks in with huge overly indulgent guitar solos courtesy of Iron Fist and Belathauzer, and thrash metal inspired riffing that instantly drags the listener by the scruff of the neck and insists you to “Thrash it like it’s ‘86”; but at the same is typically black metal. ‘Bordel Vaticano’, and ‘Exos De Chaos’ opens with melodious guitars reminding the listener of what Skid Row would sound like if they came from a parralel universe where black metal supplemented hair metal and is distinctly “black and roll”; while the latter track goes for a distinctly thrash flavoured attack, with Belathauzer’s shrieking pipes sounding like a deranged madman over the top of a delicious slice of noise. The rest of the album is extremely top notch, continuing on with a mostly thrash-centric black metal attack, giving nostalgic nods to the influences outlined earlier while the bass guitar work of Helregini and the drums of Maalm add as the perfect underpinnings to a glorious wall of noise. 

Usually, reboots are a cynical ploy for the band to cash in on long deleted albums and often dismissed as ‘money for old rope’, while they’re remastered to an inch of their lives and polished beyond all recognition. A ham fisted producer mashes his meat paws on the mixing desk, hositing everything up to 11 in the empty fallacy of ‘louder is better’ - for tone deaf root vegetables listening to terrible freebie earbuds plumbed into their smart phones.  Not so in the case of F. Matias who produced this album, as the re-recording adds a much needed dimension that the original didn’t have – breathing renewed life into the album. The guitars are fleshed out, with crisp drumming, and clearly defined vocal and bass parts. Therefore, the original objective of the album is restored for existing and new fans - that would’ve otherwise been left as a curious footnote in extreme metal history. A band worthy of far more recognition, in an otherwise ignorant world. 7/10 Goth Mark

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7/10 Victory is Possible

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