The Art of Agony

I was sitting down the other day pondering over the greatest works of metal that have constituted such a substantial part of my existence providing the drive, the inspiration, the motivation, call it whatever you like, behind my wading through this big comedy we call life. There’s no way for one to recall all the masterpieces he/she has listened to at one sit; there will always be a couple that will slip through the memory “cracks”, those that will come to mind once the fan has spent a certain portion of time rummaging through his/her CD, or mp3 collection.

Every time I’m asked to give examples of outstanding technical thrash/death metal hybrids, in 90% of the cases I’m ashamed to say I tend to forget about Vicious Circle. I don’t know why… I’m a huge fan of the band, I used to listen to their two opuses on regular bases, in the past, maybe not so often anymore; I’ve reviewed them extensively on my site, and yet somehow their name fails to be brought forward by my elephantine memory most of the time. And I seldom give them as reference when I review other works/bands; it beats me… This is the reason, I guess, why I’m writing this review for the archives quite late, after I’ve finished with almost every other act that I was planning to praise. Anyway, I’m intent on making up for this omission now, and I’m not exaggerating, not even a single word here, in my tribute to one of the finest metal outfits to ever grace the scene.

Another reason for Vicious Circle to not be a household name at the moment is perhaps the band members having kept it in the family all these years with only the two singers, different ones for each album, having shared the mike in the short-lived thrash metal grunt… sorry, stunt Grunt (self-titled demo in 1996). The founders and the original members had, and probably still do, a band named American Blood Cult, but I have no idea about the musical direction of that project. So the guys have dedicated their careers to this entity here almost exclusively, and this admirable dedication shows every bit of the way. They appeared in the late-80’s intent on crossing thrash with the up-and-coming brutal death metal sounds. The guys were operating in the same perimeter as Atheist, Hellwitch, Vacant Grave, Sadus and Revenant; in other words, they were one of the first outfits to try something more technical on the field using this hybrid as base. Unfortunately, unlike the other acts from the group, they lost inertia as their full-length debut (“Cryptic Void”, 1993) appeared relatively late on the circuit when the old school canons had already been overwritten by the new aggro/groovy/alternative music order. However, this opus closed an important era in the annals of metal, and it did it in the most astounding manner imaginable. It sounded like a best of compilation from the works of the aforementioned acts also adding the last two Sadus efforts to the fore as referential points, managing to form its own “appearance” without any attempts at emulation.

The band didn’t disappear after that, but kept reminding of themselves on a regular 3-year basis with a demo, an EP, and a compilation. This material was enough for them to persevere through the difficult 90’s and emerge revitalized and ready for more exploits in the new millennium. The songs from the demo and the EP have been assembled together along with several brand new numbers for the album reviewed here, a most tantalizing concoction of technical thrash/death metal shredders. “Dead Scent” inaugurates the “massacre” in the fiercest manner imaginable the guys weaving absolute psychotic riff-mazes of spastic super-technical riffs which fall into pits of Voivod-ish surreality and abstract melodic oblivions all these ingredients added to the appetizing “salad” which goes on for a string of tracks, reaching the culmination on the psychedelic masterpiece “Lord of Shit”, a most delectable blend of labyrinthine schizoid motifs with echoes of the aforementioned Canadians again. “I Remain in Filth” “remains” in the same waters only less predictable, constantly switching between speedy hectic and slower more elaborate sections. “Live Long and Suffer” unleashes a cannonade of vitriolic intricate rhythms which overlap each other in a compelling chaotic manner.

“Phantasia Through Agony” is a futuristic shredder with a few modern implements thrown on top of the highly-stylized death/thrashing the symbiosis acquiring creepy mechanic tendencies. “Triple Murder Suicide” is a wild deathster bringing together Atheist’s “Unquestionable Presence” and Pestilence’s “Testimony of the Ancients” in the most busy, riff-dense fashion the latter growing into supreme more thrash-fixated vortexes ala Coroner’s “Mental Vortex” (remember “Semtex Revolution” from there) on “Phantom Pains”, a timeless textbook in multi-layered technical riffing which fulfils every thrash/death metal fan’s desire leaving little for “Unfulfillment” to do except pound the listener into oblivion with a portion of fast raging, relatively more linear riffs and twisted dazzling lead sections. “Wishing the Djinn Away” is another maze of superb technicality serving a pleiad of tempos and time-shifts with more restrained passages keeping the brutality at bay. “Spiritual Deformity” is an encyclopaedia of technical death metal giving Sadus and Necrophagist a run for their money with virtuoso licks at every corner that escalate on “Written in Flesh”, an amorphous death/thrasher with piercing leads and complex riff-spirals which unwind into the quiet, subdued ending.

The band closed a chapter ten years prior, and decided to reopen it in 2004; the wisest decision by all means seeing them riding the wave of the classic hybridization campaign in the new millennium with all the vigour and enthusiasm they could muster. At the time when the sophomore opus was released the technical side of metal was still waking up, but it quickly gained inertia in the next few years with talented newcomers like Replacire, Ouroboros, Vektor, Dimesland, Beyond the Gates, Chryseis, Punish… The thrash/death metal co-existence suddenly became a very attractive proposition as practiced by the aforementioned talents. The return of the veterans Pestilence and Atheist gave a healthy shoulder of support to the oldtimers who also had Sadus and Revenant still breathing, albeit on fairly irregular intervals. Vicious Circle slowed down after the second coming following up with the “Lifelong Suicide” demo in 2007, a 4-tracker seeing them still kicking with energy and technicality to spare. It’s been a lifelong “journey”, their toiling through the metal industry and its knee-jerk caprices, but the fans have already armed themselves with patience waiting for the next “vicious” cycle to befall them whenever that may be.

Vicious Circle are something of an oddity in the modern death metal world. They essentially blend just about every form of metal style imaginable, under a common trait of brutality, and make it work in a manner that conforms to neither the directionless meandering of modern tech. death or the blandness of recent brutal death metal acts. The two dominant forces at play are the blackened thrash methodologies of the early eras of the Teutonic thrash bands in Germany and the many variants of early 90s American death metal bands, from just about every location from Florida to New York. Probably the best way I could define them without getting too detailed is the really twisted and varied offspring of little known American extreme thrash act Morbid Saint.

Vocalist Daniel Rapp underscores this jack-of-all-trades nature of this band as he successfully emulates just about every established style under the sun without sacrificing intelligibility in the process. Smatterings of Chris Barnes, Lord Worm, David Vincent, Chuck Schuldiner, Dani Filth, Ihsahn, Varg Vikerness and Frank Mullen can be heard all of the place, like the maddened ravings of a man with 8 alternate personalities shouting down his real self and filling his head with anger and despair over how fucked up the world is. Aside from the brutality factor, one definite constant on here is a strong sense of theatrics, underscored by a highly varied set of vocal mixing effects that give the appearance of a twisted staged musical going on, blinding the listener to the fact that this band is essentially a four piece death/thrash band.

The songwriting on here shares the eclecticism of the vocals, but to a lesser extent, and limited to the chromatic, dissonant, non-melodic side of the death metal spectrum. There is definitely an underlying Slayer and Kreator influence to the riffing style, though subsumed under the vileness of Suffocation and subject to a similar though not as frenzied set of rapid changeups as what was heard out of Cryptopsy on “Blasphemy Made Flesh”. This is particularly noticeable on highly varied crushers such as “I Remain In Filth”, “Triple Murder, Suicide” and “Written In Flesh”. Other songs tend to develop a plainer, early Cannibal Corpse-like character and make room for the vocals to show their wild variations such as with “Unfulfillment” and “Neurotic Reminders”. But by contrast, the lead guitar work is very neatly put together and methodical, avoiding the wildness of many earlier death metal bands who used Kerry King as a model, and tends closer to a Chuck Schuldiner character with a dash of Cryptopsy oriented technical work.

Insofar as more modern sounding death metal bands with a lot of technical and thrash additives, this is a solid release that you’ll definitely want to take a look at. It does well to avoid all of the nonsensical musical rambling that most recent brutal tech. death bands and their bastard son death core contemporaries , and comes through with a solid blend of brutality and musicality. You’ll never hear most bands today put together masterful pieces of theatrical genius like “Lord Of Shit”, and unfortunately it seems that this band will probably never reach a pinnacle like this again as their charismatic front man Daniel Rapp was unable to carry on with the band.