Fuck God-Disease Process

I recently came across Otargos through a thread on this very site discussing extreme corpse paint jobs in Black Metal. I was very impressed with their intimidating presence, and decided to see if their music matches the intensity of their appearance. I expected to hear very aggressive, intense black metal, and I can assure you that not only did it fully meet my expectations but even went beyond. This band is a breath of fresh air into a scene that has nothing much going on at the moment and in my opinion one of the current leaders in a potential wave of new black metal. The band moves away from the current trends of black metal. While bands are intentionally fucking up their production by recording their shit on an answering machine, Otargos is producing incredibly technical and clear sounding black metal, proving to nay-sayers that you don’t need shit recording to make a black metal album atmospheric. This is my review for Fuck God – Disease Process, an album I feel is their strongest to date, and a recommended listen to any fan of extreme music.

On this album, the band has dropped any Death Metal influence found on the album Ten Eyed Nemesis. They now play a style of very fast, aggressive black metal, while still being incredibly technical. The music seems to reflect balance, something not unusual for a band that is composing songs about the universe. Technicality was a big factor on this album. The use of mind-bending brutality and speed, with exact precision and carefully composed songs with such complexity conjures up an image of a force that is both The Beauty and The Beast.

The first thing that stands out is the heavy use of atmosphere on the album. The atmosphere like those of the old Black Metal bands combined with the crystal clear production and technicality makes for a sound like if the second-wave bands were suddenly propelled through space and time into the future ; still using heavy atmosphere in their music yet with the cold, effective, machine-like techniques in a world dominated by technology and machines. Many opening tracks feature melancholic riffs not unlike those of Mayhem, and then promptly kick into an aural assault of some of the most violent sounding Black Metal this side of Marduk. The band tends to follow the formula of opening with eerie atmosphere, sometimes mixing in futuristic sounds and voices, and then promptly kicking in with violent ear-piercing shrieks and face-pounding drumming; only to switch back into a period of ambience right before the climax giving you the “blue ball effect” and then proceeds to give the fans what they wanted, and continue on a rampage of extreme black metal seldom heard with such ferocity. The ambient sections let the listeners imaginations wander, giving an impression of floating aimlessly through a misanthropic and dark universe.

A personal favorite of mine is the track “Erased”; a song which fully encompasses the themes and aim of the album. The track opens with a robotic voice, spewing fourth undecipherable robotic gibberish, echoing through the halls of a space station headed for annihilation. The song then proceeds to keep along its path of atmosphere to brace you for utter and complete devastation. This is one of the album’s most intense tracks. The song begins to close with the dark, apathetic ambience prevalent throughout the album, but not before finishing with something that is one of my favorite moments in Black Metal. The last moments of the song make me think of universal deconstruction, as the last moments are eerily technical and robotic sounding, entirely monotonous, with no audible human emotions. In the future there is no place for humanity, as we have become obsolete. The last minute of the song is really what this song needed in order to fully complete it, and thereby completing the album. By dissecting the song section by section, you can realize the goal of this album and you realize that they have more than accomplished this.

All in all, this album is a landmark for technical Black Metal bands. Very rare is it an album that truly makes me “feel and imagine” concepts that I myself am not familiar with, and was able to understand the direction and themes of the album without even reading the lyrics. If you like extreme music period, especially technical stuff, this is the album for you.