Road to the Octagon

I cannot believe that until yesterday I had never listened to Impaled Nazarene, the black metal juggernaut from Finland. They hadn’t entirely slipped under my radar as their twenty three year career to date is an impressive accomplishment but for some reason I had never gotten around to listening them, so with fresh resolve I grabbed a copy of the album and was blown away by the incredible artwork, always a good start and then decided to give it a spin. Boy am I glad I did…

Impaled Nazarene give a lot away within the opening moments of opening track “Enlightenment Process”, the most notable being that the band play with a sudden and direct urgency as well as an abrasive fast paced barrage like sound! As if to hammer home those points “The Day of Reckoning” if anything increases the intense flow of noise and destructive beats as each separate function of Impaled Nazarene joins as one to produce and vast wall of hostile, cold and ravenous black metal that feels like it could swallow you whole before spitting out your bones. Further strengthening the rabid hate spewing Impaled Nazarene image is the bands lyrics. Take the track “Corpses” as an example which appears to berate peoples use of modern science and technology to cheat death at the expense of a decent standard of living, the chorus summing things up nicely… “Drooling and shitting, shit and drool, Smell of death”.

It doesn’t appear to be all seriousness though as fourth track “Under Attack” appears to be a straight up blitz of a song with fast full throttle riffs, carnivorous drumming and hilarious lyrics… “Angels Rectum Under Attack”. Indeed as you’d expect death seems to be a massive influence on Impaled Nazarene, a thought bolstered by “Tentacles of the Octogon” whose sound once more is sheer carnage personified and whose lyrical message is one of bloody slaughter and gore… “The road to the Octagon is paved with corpses, Nobody escapes the wrath of the Octagon” … and this proves to be a short sharp attack as the band are soon battering viciously through “Reflect on This” which if not talking about death exactly is still demonstrating a band who lyrics, sound and attitude is intent on doing people harm… “Face turns red, veins are bursting, Just wanna beat the living fuck out of you”… whilst “Convulsing Uncontrollably” to me is a simple metaphor for the band itself … “Tonight we are going to burn in hell, For there will be no limits, We will take everything you have got, We are totally unstoppable”.

Now you can’t have a decent black metal album without a certain animal of the horned variety being mentioned and Impaled Nazarene don’t fail to deliver as they drag you kicking and screaming into “Cult of the Goat” which funnily enough after seven whole songs is the first time the band choose to slow down the pace and show their more melodic and graceful side… for about fifteen seconds, at which point they savagely continue their bloodshed unabated. With a name more a kin to death metal than black, “Gag Reflex” brings in a further element of sickness and perversion as well as a whole new level of malice with the opening lyrics “Cry you fucking cunt, fucking cry, As I cherish and molest your life, Puke you fucking cunt, fucking puke, You will learn to obey new rules”… and in keeping with Impaled Nazarene tradition the accompanying music is shall we say still on the “I’m gonna rip off your head and shit down your neck” side of things, fast, brutal, bass heavy and furious!

“Road to the Octogon” is by now sadly reaching it’s final stages, not that you’d know it as the band once more slam down hard during “The Plan” and by now the bands automatic speed of “really fucking fast” means that each song flows effortlessly into the next. This though is yet another short shot int he arm of hate filled adrenaline and soon “Silent & Violent Type” is plaguing your ears with thoughts of those quiet folk who never bother anyone always being the ones who cut people up and fuck them afterwards! Want proof? “I placed a crown of thorns On her stomach, I raped her because I did not, Wanna waste a good erection”. Classic… and I love the more grindcore and death metal lyrical slant with which Impaled Nazarene insist on utilizing. Penultimate track “Execute Tapeworm Extermination” is two minutes of blind spite and fury before the ultimate finale of “Rhetoric Infernal”, the bands longest track of the album and one that strays in to more Satanic waters.

If you want variation and progression, go elsewhere! This album is thirteen tracks of belligerent, aggressive sodomy, gore, puss, rape, murder and much much more! Superb!

Originally posted on Destructive Music
http://destructive-music.com/?p=8669

Impaled Nazarene might not release works of unchecked, viral and raw brilliance anymore like a Latex Cult, but they've kept with the times rather avidly, never once sacrificing their extremity and nuclear party attitude through their studio evolution and improved musicianship. Road to the Octagon is the band's 11th full-length offering, and the Finns once again remind us that black metal need not be bloated or pretentious to be effective, straddling the snortable white line between serious lyrics and execution, and fare of a lighter, punkish 'fun' nature (i.e. the continued legacy of the goat), with a similar, hi-octane thrash aesthetic that permeated their past few albums like Manifest and Pro Patria Finlandia.

As expected, this experience is not the usual stabbing in the wintry woods, staring in pain as the blood pools out into the snow and icicles form along the lacerations, but rather a band of mutant reavers pounding your skull into fragments on the pavement as their leather and spikes glitter in the fallout of a world gone mad. Velocity is the weapon of choice, and tracks like "Enlightenment Process", "Tentacles of the Octagon" and "Convulsing Uncontrollably" all burst past the listener in rarely more than 2 minutes time. There are a few swerves in the formula, like the blistering death metal riff that inaugurates "Reflect On This", or the further dynamics of the album's 'epic' finale "Rhetoric Infernal" (epic only that it's over 4 minutes long...) which actually breaks for a slower rhythm in the bridge, but for almost the entirely of the 13 tracks and 33 minutes, you're being repeatedly flogged at rapid tempos.

That is what Impaled Nazarene excel at, and on Road to the Octagon, they do it with more fervor than we've heard in years, not to mention one of the best mixing shine jobs of their career. As voracious and vorpal as the band's writing remains, the better production here is a huge leap over the band's 90s efforts, and though it might not be cited for the same smutty novelty the band were then associated for against all odds, it's a ripping good time for a half hour spent on the dragway burning rubber, or at the dumpster passing your liquid lunch. Whipping guitar rhythms channel thrash, punk and heavy metal influences into the characteristic snarl of Mika's blasphemous binging, and the rhythm section storm along like twins born of opiate lightning. No compromise, no compositional evolution, and if you think the band are slowing down as their limbs experience the continued incursions of gravity and cell death, well...first you'll have to catch them.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com