Murder's Concept

Polish death is a most essential branch within the death metal circuit, and if in the 90’s it was treading behind the Swedish and the US scenes, ever since the beginning of the new millennium it has pretty much come on top of the movement, both quality and quantity-wise, fighting with the Italians for the premier position.

Yattering are one of the pioneers of the genre over there, and the only reason why they’re not mentioned right beside Vader, Dragon, Devilyn, Hate and Violent Dirge is the ill-measured industrial/techno experiment “III” (2005) which effectively terminated their career way before the guys had managed to say whatever they had to say. However, before this controversial recording the band did make a wholesome contribution to the death metal roster starting with the excellent intense, semi-technical debut “Human’s Pain”.

Another however, even the most stylish quirks on said debut couldn’t even slightly hint at what the band would cook on their next instalment, the album reviewed here. With this grand opus the guys go straight into the dazzling brutality zone, and give Cryptopsy, Suffocation, their compatriots Devilyn and the likes a very good run for their money with tons of wild, chaotic, and at the same time strangely sophisticated rifforamas. The madness is unleashed with “The Art of the 20th Century”, a compulsive spastic shredder which overwhelms the listener with swirling speedy skirmishes, the cannonade pacified by regularly applied slower passages. In other words, there’s a method to the madness, applied beyond the 20th century as well, and “The Murderer” follows a similar trajectory with a disciplined alternation between ultra-fast and more reasonable stomping decisions.

“The Species” pummels the audience into oblivion with the most aggressive performance on the album, under 3-min or sheer super-technical death metal chaos. “Life for Life” is a longer, more carefully crafted composition, which in the band’s case means more room for puzzling, illogical arrangements which jump the Necrophagist wagon in no time with the twisted melodic licks provided. The actual delights have only begun, though, and “Exterminate” is just one of them, a hyper-active amorphous cut with wild chaotic leads and some of the most tightly woven riff-knots this side of Crimson Massacre’s “The Lustre f Pandemonium”; the Americans must have listened to the opus here for months on end. “…An Inanimate” operates within the same parametres, immaculate brutal technicality with loads of perplexing time-signatures and more or less heralded tempo changes, a storm of vitriolic elaborate guitars which continue their destructive march on the short spastic “Pleasure”; the surreal psychedelic progressiver “Anal Narcotic” which inserts twisted mazey configurations ala Theory in Practice among the rapidfire downpour; and partially on all-instrumental etude “Rescue” which slows down settling for jumpy, minimalistic weirdness with a somewhat epic flavour.

A truly mesmerizing showdown to which the Polish field has been accustomed with wizards like Faeces, Vedonist, Never, Devilyn, Sceptic, Dragon, etc., but chronologically this effort was the first one to tip the scales towards the genuinely very technical, brutal ways of execution, something which Devilyn started, but couldn’t quite flesh out to perfection before “Artefact” (2001). This album would have been the highlight on the other side of the Atlantic as well, stirring the hegemony of the mentioned luminaries who would have learnt a trick or two from their Polish brethren. With “Onset of Putrefaction”, “None So Vile”, and “Pierced from Within” already released, some would object to this album’s highly estimated qualities and overall significance, but, man, was it not great to hear something as spontaneously technical and chaotic at the dawn of the new millennium… a sure sign that death metal hasn’t said its final word yet, and there was much more to be expected from this side of the metal arena.

Well, from the dazzling brutality movement perspective things have already been said and done as the newly joined riff-mongers pretty much regurgitated the music from the already listed opuses, and save for the earlier mentioned Crimson Massacre masterpiece not too many grand deeds have occurred in this particular department. The genre later diversified into Shrapnel-like virtuosity showdowns (Kataplexy, Grotesque, Decrepit Birth, etc.), psychedelic, trippy hallucinations (Beheaded Zombie, Obliteration, Execration, Morbus Chron, etc.), and robotic mechanical landscapes (Wormed, Zillah, Ulcerate, Gigan, etc.). Our friends here shot another noteworthy tribute to their chosen branch ("Genocide”) three years later before throwing it all down the drain with the disastrous “III”, the title reflecting it having been recorded right after the album reviewed here, as a third instalment, but released later. A wise decision by all means; imagine this dance-orama following right after the piece of intricate brutality here… a horrible setting which at least bounced off that “Genocide” without any fatal repercussions. Cause “murder” must have been in the mind of the fanatics for sure; no one stains one of the milestones in the death metal pantheon… not even its own creators.

This is the only Yattering album I own or have heard so I can't compare it to any other albums of theirs. I know they are Polish, have ex Vader drummers among their previous lineups and they play technical, brutal death metal. That's about it, except that when you listen to this it doesn't quite sound like how you'd expect. There is a weirdness running through this album that's hard to explain.

As this is brutal tech death, obvious comparisons can be made to Suffocation. In parts it also reminded me of Deeds of Flesh. Basically, this doesn't sound as 'Polish' as I expected. They could easily follow the trend of copying Vader, Decapitated or even Behemoth, but Yattering do their own thing. This is chaotic tech death, frequent time changes and spastic riffing. Not quite as disjointed as a band such as Anata, but certainly not straightforward like traditional death metal. Perhaps a bit like Cryptopsy only not as crushing.

My major problems with this album are as follows: the frantic nature of the music ruins the flow of the songs, some bands can pull off this chaotic style (Cryptopsy) while Yattering just seem to be throwing random ideas together. Also, to say this is supposedly brutal, I just listened to this album and not once did I think 'wow, that's heavy and/or brutal'. i listen to a lot of death metal so maybe I'm desensitised to it, but if I played something like Disavowed, Centurian or Pyaemia (three of Holland's finest brutal DM bands) I'd be impressed by the brute force of it no matter how many times I hear them. The Dutch do brutal DM so much better than anyone and Yattering could've done with taking some ideas from that scene. Tech death isn't that brutal usually, bands like Necrophagist and Obscura simply aren't heavy! Yattering sit in an awkward middle ground between the two styles of technical and brutal, yet aren't really that good at either. OK they can play their instruments, but the songwriting is really lacking. They also throw too many styles into the mix, 'Damaged' sounds like mid 90's Napalm Death which is just weird and not in a good way.

This album is odd, a bizarre mix of technicality and attempted brutality, strange genre influences (the slow industrial grind of the aforementioned 'Damaged') and a fairly average vocal performance spouting lyrics about murder, gore and rape. So nothing new on that front either. Maybe worth investigating if you want a different approach to death metal but I wouldn't overly recommend this album.

A better title for this album would have been "Unyielding Weirdness", because that's essentially what you get when you purchase this album. If you like a relentless assault of wacko riffs, this is your band al the way.

Yattering is the Paprika on the spice rack of Polish death metal. It's not something you could eat every day or have too much of, but it does work. It's a little schizo in it's delivery, but if you're interested in brutal but insane riffing, this album hits the mark.

The guitar sound is pretty crunchy, but doesn't really have too much low end, so the end result is not as deep and dark as it really should be. The music is heavy as a bastard, but it doesn't have as much kick as it should. Not to say it doesn't have any, but it doesn't have the throat that it should.

The vocals are decent, even if you won't really find this singer amongst the all time greats. He gets the job done and has a good deep growl, but it doesn't really have that from-the-murky-sewers sound that an album like this really needs. He isn't at the front of the mix like a lot of Polish stuff (Nergal knows he's guilty of this) and that is a bonus.

...An Inanimate comes close to traditional death metal at some points, and Pleasure has some great hooks, but it's mostly a collage of death metal insanity. The previous review likened it somewhat to Suffocation, which is a decent reference point, but they are more chaotic (if you can believe that). It doesn't have the coherence that a band like Gorguts does, but for crazy, fast, weird death metal, this is the album to have.

Firstly, if you're a fan of Suffocation, and enjoy the endless riffing without the slightest hint of catchiness, then this will appeal to you for certain. The band plays very complex songs that seem to follow absolutely no direction whatsoever, to the point that for this reviewer, they could do anything as long as it sounded brutal and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. What the band maybe lose in meaning, they definitely make up for in sound though. Some members used to be in Vader, so imagine something like Litany, but instead of the tight, precise, Slayer type playing, be prepared for chaos. They don't have a sound quite like any other death band I've heard, the vocals are probably the most unique part of the album, the banshee-like shrieks now and then really add a lot to it, and they've got a big thick sound that would put most bands to shame. An interesting feature of this album is that between tracks, the band has inserted some quiet, ambient keyboard bits. The reason for this seems to me to be just to help you tell one track from the next, because if they didn't, the album would just merge into one long song.
Lyrically, the songs seem to mostly be about murder and sodomizing young children, but being Polish, I don't know if their grasp of our language is maybe good enough to translate the content as harshly as might be possible.
So, to sum up, they get most of their points for sound and brutality, add another 15 or so, if endless, uncatchy riffing a la Suffocation is your thing, but I can't rate an album any higher when it never gets going, except for maybe on track 7....