The Pitch: Psychodelic technical death metal from Costa Rica's Corpse Garden via Godz ov War Productions. The new album, IAO 269, takes the band into bold, new territory; far more experimental and even trance-like at times. FFO: Gigan, Veilburner, John Frum, Norse
What I Like: The music of Corpse Garden is a dense fog of blackened, technical metal music. To listen to it is to be lost in a disorienting haze of atonal doom, grinding riffs, and shifting time signatures. IAO 269 is chaos, to be sure, but a chaos moderated by some unseen force; one manning a control panel consisting of a single dial. Sometimes the madness is contained by cranking the dial up, as with the more aggressive and straightforward "Death Hex," others chaos is allowed to reign more freely ("Ain Soph Aur"). Throughout the album, and often within single compositions, we are treated to varying degrees of this control, and it is done to great effect. But across the board, expect a plethora of foul vocal styles, highly proficient drumming, and riffs that define "technical" in a perverse and experimental fashion. The lengthy i"La Muerte_ Principio y Redención," an interlude consisting of sparse, ritualistic instrumentation and hypnotic ambience, may even leave you questioning your sanity.
Critiques: IAO 269 is a touch long for my taste. My feeble brain can only handle a certain threshold of cerebral torment, and the music of Corpse Garden is seriously taxing for close to an hour runtime. But if the band's ultimate goal was to leave me feeling mentally drained, mission accomplished.
The Verdict: If you thought John Frum was mindrape, it is child's play in comparison to Corpse Garden. IAO 269 is the demented lovechild of Deathspell Omega, Gorguts, and Malthusian. If you think you can handle it, commence cognitive deconstruction below.
Flight's Fav's: Death Hex, Expanding The Vision Call, Aeon of Horus
-Review by FlightOfIcarus
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