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Dusted Reviews
Artist: Dissection Album: Reinkaos Label: The End Review date: Jun. 4, 2006 |
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Death Metal is experiencing a resurgence of late, in no small part to the grizzled progenitors’ refusals to fade, as Kreator, Deicide and Morbid Angel have either took to the road or took every advantage of 6.6.06 – a means to an end for occultist and big corporate marketer alike. Yet, while Floridian hordes Deicide and Morbid Angel stay true to their brand of dazzling technical thrash, never striving to overstep campy constraints, the lot of Northern Europe’s Death Metal faction continues on the ruinous road of stone-faced gravity – a facet not readily found in one of metal’s sillier subgenres. Sweden’s Dissection is a point and fact, utilizing “Dog Latin,” classical guitar, martial drumming and – of course – the superfluous “eerie” intro to an unintended hilarious yield.
Reinkaos marks the band’s first effort in over a decade, as frontman Jon Nödtveidt was recently released from prison. The big house has done little for Nödtveidt’s craft, showing him not only out of touch with Death Metal’s current state, but also willing to piece songs together in a half-witted laze, a process redolent of jejune indifference. This disinterest is readily heard: Dissection constructs song titles as pointless as their song structures. Where “Chaosophia” serves a senseless classical bridge to “God of Forbidden Light” – a mid-paced yawner suffocated by a big-haired guitar duel – the real fun begins with a look at the lyric sheet. Words as doomed as barreled fish at the whim of a rifle-toting adolescent rogue (“Illumination's father - God of shadowless [sic] light/ Black Sun of dark mysteries - Restore the dragon's sight”) come off not as Satanic invocation, but as “dark” Disney pap, where the “dragon” could easily refer to Puff, or Pete’s, not the force of unspeakable evil. “Starless Aeon” and “Beyond the Horizon,” while referencing the “frightening” unknown, apes Emperor at its most sedate, clicking through predictable and homogenous changes. Uninspired, cliché crippled music to be sure, which is ostensibly why Dissection has decided to unplug and head home.
By Stewart Voegtlin
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View all articles by Stewart Voegtlin