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Inner Thought > Worldly Separation > Reviews
Inner Thought - Worldly Separation

Under cover of night it came to me - 87%

Gutterscream, September 9th, 2017
Written based on this version: 1994, Cassette, Dwell Records (Reissue)

“…God is all you need, they say…”

As I surge excitedly into the middle of middle age I find that about 80% of the text on cassette j-cards is simply unreadable anymore. Now, my vision has never been great, and while I sometimes mistake those little black floaters in my vision for imaginary insects darting across the floor, I used to read this stuff just fine without needing it to be literally at arm’s length. Even then I usually still can’t read the damn thing (and if I wasn’t crazy about cassettes then, I’m pretty sane about ‘em now)

My hearing, however, has yet to let me down, so if I wanna come off all pretentious and inflated by intimating that I regularly close my eyes when listening to (certain) music as part of some advanced focusing technique or sensory isolation/awakening exercise to impress my two dogs, it’s not the truth, but it’s not exactly a lie, either. See, a long time ago I did just that with this Canadian three-piece’s debut - once - and in an unusual way it affected how I absorbed and now recall this nine-track's slowly thundering burn (well, essentially side one, ‘cos nuthin’ says I have to admit to using it as background ‘noise’ while merely trying to sleep).

Anyway, the promo package keyed me in that the inner and outer thoughts of former Slaughter (Can) guitarist Bobby Sadzak is the driving force behind this thing that’s quite removed from the wantonly wild thrash imprint perceived by his former band. Thing is, in reality Sadzak only performed on the band’s Paranormal and The Dark demos, both in ’88 and a year post debut Strappado which, incidentally, is Slaughter’s sole claim to, well, just about everything they’re known for, and Dwell Records was of course quick to grease its PR division with this minor tidbit-made-significant. Though to be fair, he is quite the busybody here, playing guitar, bass on all but three tracks, keyboards, and got the drum machine up n’ running. Another mentionable is the album’s dedication to all the innocent victims of the war in Yugoslavia and around the world, an important message arrested to a small, unreadable (for me) part of the inlay a few centimeters from uplifting photos of war-born facial mutilation.

But before sugar plum dreams could take me, Worldly Separation was quick to build a painstaking and unhurried atmosphere separating it from other death metal. While just about all death metal reigns with overall mighty and impregnable auras, hardly any even think of, let alone succeed, at hanging any sort of mysticism from them. Comparably, while Morbid Angel enjoy dropping song-length blocks of unconventional aural wisdom/vision (“Doomsday Celebration”, “Nar Mattaru”, “Melting”, “Dreaming”, etc.) throughout their albums, Inner Thought drapes it across much of the lp’s entire window, half through emotive keystrokes and half through a variety of industrial samples. The title cut is superior in this as it deliberately ambles a mid/slow pace except for a brief hurricane of blast-beaten rage, cut threateningly through with keyboards bemoaning a fair range of impending peril. Other times, as in “In Ourselves We Trust”, the keys accentuate using only quick, lancing stabs that further injure the song’s existing tragedy.

Organ haunts introductory “Madness” with Transylvanian churchgoer gusto, whatever that is, complete with a supreme-voiced, grand echoence message/fateful warning/great prophecy that of course should be heeded by all. Different, but with equal presence is the surreal drone of closer “Ethnic Cleansing”, and with a malnourished drawl it books its departure alongside the lp’s final rhythm that’s unusually slow to fade in Bolt Throwerian fashion (hear: “Through the Ages”, awesome “In Remembrance”, etc.)

Kelly Montico performs well here, bellowing a split-personality cavernous growl ala Aaron of same-era My Dying Bride and a winking black metal semi-screech that for death metal is stylistically sharp, but consciously falls short of fully blackening the mark of the aforementioned, often Satan-sharing style.

In at least one instance a song’s structure specifically enhances its purpose of social awareness, like “War” where, amid air raid sirens, human sentence fragments, Sadzak’s near-perpetual background solos, and a mildly deviating persistent rhythm, it features a brief first person character narrative performed by vocalist Susan Sadzak to the bleak tune of “…my husband and two children have been killed in this war. Now I am all alone…”. Yeah, makes the zeppole vendor running out of powdered sugar at the carnival a little less of a tragedy afterward. Additionally, female vocals sing in tandem with Montico in “Drowning in Sorrow” (via Andrea Skewes), further supplementing the album’s cryptic allure.

Straighter, bell n’ whistle-less death metal ransoms “Diseased Infected Earth” and “Forever Distant” to understandably impatient and more conventional d.m. crowds who find the album's atmospheric undertow to be an annoying dilution at best. These people shouldn’t deprive themselves of checking out “Disorder of Battles” though, a top draw that often leaps from grinding, bulldozer-tread riffs to sudden bursts of speed in a inhale/exhale pattern as if someone keeps corking and uncorking their blowholes. Behind it all, keyboards add a light glow of serenity without weakening the number’s flattening power.

Noticeable way sooner than its being mentioned here, the overall movement of Worldly Separation appears to almost hover in place; a slow menace, like a bruised storm cloud that’s only a short drift away from dishing out disaster, and somehow seems to achieve this by only fleetingly strafing true doom metal and downplaying typical, obligatory death metal speed. In fact, its slow to mid-flammable broil that catches fire only sparingly is strange and unused enough to throw listeners off the parallel scent of Obituary’s output from, say, ‘92’s The End Complete to ‘97’s Back From the Dead. Secondarily, the group’s doom-related creep combined with an understanding of skillful, quasi-Gothic ambiance set them on a course to rub elbows with the day’s atmospheric doom/death nobility of My Dying Bride, Anathema, Paradise Lost and Celestial Season. They unfortunately never arrived there.

While it's not hard to label this a work of action, calling it more of what it actually is - a work of art - is, yeah, still probably a few splashes overboard. So where does Worldly Separation stand? Not exactly sure, but I know Inner Thought kept mine awake and attentive when the rest of me wanted to hit the sack. If not for some sleep-deprived minutes, I probably wouldn’t have dedicated the same kind of time to understand this thing.

“…blackened have the skies turned…”

My inner thought is this is disappointing. - 35%

radicaleb, March 15th, 2007
Written based on this version: 1993, CD, Witchhunt Records

This album is such a disappointment after hearing the "Disorder of Battles" 7-inch. This is really watered-down death metal, and I say "watered down" because, at heart, there are quite a few nice ideas on here, they're just so thinned out that it's really hard to enjoy them or even listen to this album at all.

The main thing this album has going for it are some really heavy riffs laced sporadically throughout. As I mentioned in the ep review, Bobby Sadzak really knows his way around slow, chugging guitar parts and they do pop up frequently enough, as in the title track, "War," and "Forever Distant." But everything else about the band's sound detracts from those solid bits of songwriting, predominantly the use of drum machines. I have no problem with drum-machine metal at all, but the sounds presented here are just terribly chosen, and frankly, any living drummer would be embarrassed to have written most of these drum parts. The keyboards that are used occasionally throughout have the exact same effect, just leaving me to wonder, "why did you pick the most annoying of all keyboard tones?" The one exception to this rule is the stellar, heavy-as-fuck, "Disorder of Battles," where everything comes together to sound really techy and progressive, like a death metal version of VOIVOD or something. This song is the whole reason I sought out "Worldly Separation" and also the reason I'm totally disappointed by it. No wonder they picked it for the 7-inch.

The vocals on here are also really sub-par, and most of the time it feels like the lyrics don't fit the riff structures. Kelly Montico's death-growl is really under-developed.....it's way too comprehensible and would be great for a death-thrash band in '87 but just feels weak for 1993. To be fair, on the decent "Forever Distant," the only song for which he wrote the lyrics, he lets out some pretty rad black metal screams that make me think he should have been in another project entirely. There are also some female vocals in a couple of songs that are so bad and unnecessary…they're performed by Bob Sadzak's wife and I don't want to judge on her but I feel like maybe that's the only reason they're included.

This whole album makes me think that maybe Bob was a hard musician to work with. The fact that there's no actual drummer, that his wife's vocals are included, that he played bass on the album though this band had a bassist (Ed Balog), and that he wrote most of the lyrics and music make me curious as to what his abilities as a guitarist would have sounded like if tempered by a group of equal-footing musicians. As it is, this just sounds like a really frustrating, sprawling studio project, one that squanders the great parts it does contain. This album isn't much more than a Canadian metal footnote.