Psycho One Hundred

If I told you about a record which starts with some death metal grinding tracks, which, at the end features a four part doom epic with female vocals, and also an atmospheric ambient track, and which ends with a Motorhead track, you'll probably think that it's a fucking joke, or an unfocused lame piece of shit or a complete waste of your metalhead time. If I told you I love that record, you'll probably think I have lost my mind. Ok, that was the situation when a good friend of mine started to talk about a CD he discovered through a common friend of both (sadly deceased six years ago) who owned some of the most incredible underground records I discovered through my teen days.

So, many years later, that departed friend of mine, the same who discovered me hidden treasures of the underground like the amazing "Immense, Intense, Suspense" from the underrated band Phlebotomized, was discovering me another amazing and forgotten record: “Psycho One Hundred” by Nembrionic. I have to admit I love everything about this CD, even the cover artwork, a painting in the old tradition with no computer shit on it: it depicts a sewer drowned in blood and peeled bodies, it reminds me some of the artwork of Eleuterio Serpieri.

The first ten tracks of the album, as you can read on the nice Gutterscream' review, are focused on speed, insanity and some melodic parts. They show a nice death metal band, with some grind flavor, and a funny sense of humor (on the first track, "Kill them", a grind carnage of only 50 seconds, they use some samples from the popular videogame Doom). In "Strength Through Pain" the band starts to moderate the speed to feature a very interesting guitar work.

Then starts the "Psycho One Hundred" four movement piece. The first part "Development" it's some kind of intro, with a repetitive bass sound and the band attacking some chords. The crazy vocals does not appear until the second half of the track, filled with anger and madness. "Morning" it's a semi-acoustic track leaded by the great vocals of the complete unknown Claudia Van De Aker. As the tracks reaches it's climax, it's time for the sthird part, "Ceremony", an ambiental and experimental track. It's amazing listening to it, knowing that some minutes before you were listening to a death metal band. The track ends in an obscure brutal part. The last part of this piece, "Evening" retakes the motives of "Morning", with the female vocals and the same melodies again, but with a more climatic sense to them and some bombastic keyboards that remind me the ones from Faith No More. Great! The album ends with "Bulldozer", a brutal rock & roll attack with clear reminiscences to Motorhead. Ain't it great?

So, this is a nice and clever record to listen to, an obviously underrated underground treasure that deserves the opportunity I guess it didn’t have back in 1995, when it was released.

"...how senseless is this thing before me?

While Nembrionic were always entrenched in death metal mode, a more grind influence prevails on this twelve-tracker, the first full-lengther from this Dutch four-piece formerly known as Nembrionic Hammerdeath, and seems to boast an increase in songwriting delivery as well as alterations in style their past releases, notably '93's Themes on an Occult Theory ep and '94's Tempter split, lacked.

From the ballistic start of "Kill Them" and onward to "Strength Through Hate", velocities supersede any form of structure, taking "Coffin on Coffin" along for the ride. It then shifts speed to accommodate the more moderate "Strength Through Pain", but is laid to waste by the quick-paced masher "Warzone". Melody rings unexpectedly in "Modo Grosso", acting as an antithesis to the speed absolute "Death to the Harmless" and "15 Minutes" grind with. And for a delayed-action wolf in sheep's clothing, "Bulldozer" sounds like heavier Motorhead.

As you can read, the cyber swiftness encompasses many a track, comparable to a less precise Seance with a lighter guitar tone coupled with Cannibal Corpse intensity as most songs linger on or below the three minute mark with the exception of the four-part, 21+ minute, multi-faceted title cut. With gingerly-fingered fretboard behind female vocals remindful of Maria Ex-Communikata to a cross between computer game soundtracks of Doom 2 and Hexen and something from the ambient section of the Relapse catalog, the unleashing of more experimental and daring landscapes is quite obvious and is something they probably had a good time concocting.

Unfortunately, I cannot say it they acted on this newly found experimentalism in subsequent releases, but I wouldn't be too surprised it elements of this epic infiltrated its way into future songs.