Kyrie

This promised to be a thrilling ride from just looking at the line-up: two former members of the thrash/death metal stalwarts Messiah, two musicians from the visionary progressive thrashers Calhoun Conquer, one of whom being none other than Peter Haas, the renowned drum guru (also Krokus, Mekong Delta, Poltergeist, etc.). A nice assembly for sure that didn’t stay together for very long, but at least placed themselves in the one-album-wonder category with the opus reviewed here.

Having in mind the pedigree of the artists involved, one would expect a smattering technical/progressive riff-fest with thrash and death being juggled throughout, with quirky twists and turns regularly provided, and although this effort doesn’t shift too far from those expectations, it’s also a fairly unpredictable ride, for both better and worse. The album begins with two lengthy, drawn-out compositions which show an obvious influence from the last two at the time Messiah works, and respectively early-90’s Death, but Schuldiner’s (R.I.P.) guitar wizardry isn’t emphasized on so much as the evocation of atmosphere is the guys’ prime target. And they achieve it on all counts with haunting keyboards constantly lurking in the background also bringing The Gathering’s “Always” to mind, the fast-paced “skirmishes” also amply provided on “Pictures of Paradise”, a most amorphous opus which switches from deep atmospherics to hard-hitting rifforamas in the span of seconds, the scary brutal death metal vocals stifling the several outside-the-box decisions like jazzy Cynic-esque breaks, etc. Not to worry so much as there are plenty of other surprises provided on “Unknown Tribe” which hectic jarring riffs will recall Atheist and Pestilence, but watch out for the couple of imposing doomy passages those looking at the Dutch heritage again (Orphanage, Beyond Belief), accompanied by cleaner operatic vocals and authoritative recitals.

“Manifest 05” is a short momentary, all-instrumental “manifest” compared to the two preceding behemoths, 3.5-min of relatively calm deathy progressivisms which flow into an even shorter, also instrumental etude (“Séance”) that is pure keyboard-induced ambience, before “Gothic Spring” starts marching with formidable steam-rolling riffs, the cleaner vocal insertions sounding utterly surreal on the fairly academic, officiant musical background; the palpable dark gothic/doomy atmosphere gets dissipated by excellent virtuoso leads, but the lack of any speedy escapades makes this cut a tiring monotonous listen at some point. “The Awakening” suddenly adds a modern mechanical groovy vibe, and besides that more doom and gloom, the stiff execution remaining on the awkward side, including the one on the closing “Wandering Spirit”, a patchy rigid attempt at industrial which seriously spoils the positive impression made by the first few tracks.

In the end the guys have problems deciding what they want to be, an atmospheric progressive death/doom, or a modern industrial metal act, and this hesitation between the two sides doesn’t always come out great. In fact, it’s more on the hastily assembled side as the two styles are audibly divided with doom serving as the mediator, but again not very successfully the whole time. Besides, quite a few stylish decisions have been left unfinished creating the impression that apart from the first two long compositions the rest of the material is just sketches of bigger incomplete numbers the guys having either lost the inspiration to bring them to their fruition, or have given up at some stage seeing the very ambitious direction this whole project was taking, one they were not willing to pursue all the way…

Regardless of the final result, this effort remains a curiosity in the annals of Swiss, and also European, metal, an example of how a team of talented musicians can’t always produce a coherent collective effort with so many minds and ideas put together. Acts like Phlebotomized and Dark Millennium managed to pull out similar concoctions (minus the industrial and the groove) in a better way, without the involvement of so many stars, but the eclectic, weird element is way more tangible here, on this unusual tractate from Babylonian history.

Arriving at the peak of death metal's early exploratative period, when one might say it was almost a trend for bands to take the formula and expand upon it by incorporating a whole host of outside influences, Switzerland's Babylon Sad produced this rather oddball statement of intent before vanishing into total oblivion. I've had this one for quite a long time, but until recently I could find no information whatsoever about this band on the Internet, and even Metal Archives had very little to say about past members or associations with other bands, so it seemed as though this was really a one-off entity; perhaps a bunch of "outsiders" getting their feet wet in this strange death metal phenomenon before timidly turning back and retreating into whatever fusion band they snuck out of. There are certainly indications of a lack of coherence and direction to be found on this little album, but I'll get to that presently. It turns out that most of these guys are veterans of older bands in the metal realm, but interestingly their immersion in the "scene" seems to have more or less ended with "Kyrie".

After a strange and very short introduction of pounding tympany and latin chanting of what sounds like an exhortation for mercy from on high, things start rather quickly with a sneaky ascending/descending riff pattern and then a thrashing barrage. This doesn't last long though, and it isn't really the addition of sussurant and (at this point) understated keyboards that makes this sound rather unusual. No, the real game that Babylon Sad play here is one of obfuscation and confusion, as the first track, "Pictures of Paradise", lasting for over eight and a half minutes, winds, judders and curves into a dizzying number of bizarre rhythms, variances and moods. Though it's all rather cohesive and there are actually repeated motifs and even a chorus of sorts, it seems to be orchestrated to be purposefully jarring and unpredictable. What this sounds like, more than anything else I can think of, is the band Death, who'd just released their "Human" album a couple of years earlier, with keyboards, an occasionally brooding and almost gothic atmosphere, and more overtly jazz inspired soloing. Cynic might also be a pretty appropriate reference point (unsurprisingly, I suppose), but Babylon Sad are altogether less uplifting and a good deal more overtly metal than Cynic had become on their "Focus" album.

The musicianship is extremely tight and the band makes heavy (and perhaps irritating, to some metalheads) use of "judddering" stop-start rhythms and revs their proverbial engine sometimes before going into a breakneck passage by starting a riff, slamming on the "brakes" and then lurching back to life in some slightly off-kilter but very expertly pulled off manner. It certainly doesn't make for enthusiastic headbanging, but that's not really what this band was aiming for. obviously, the music is quite complex, but more in the structures of the pieces and the solos rather than the intricacy of individual riffs, although there are certainly some very odd time signitures being utilised. solos are not very plentiful, but when they do appear, are a delight to hear because of their charming employment of unusual jazzy intervals and even some cool and slightly brazen lead harmonies. and The keyboards are actually a welcome presence here as they aren't very overbearing, but add a mysterious and otherworldly ambience to the proceedings, especially during the occasional ominous, doomy passage, such as the fantastic build-up to the second "chorus" in the aforementioned lead-off epic, which also features a stirring and climactic performance from the drummer. One thing I admire about this band is their ability to utilise dynamics of volume contrast and build-ups in order to further the atmosphere of their music. The production job here is excellent and highlights this almost playful approach to song construction beautifully, especially during the odd musical curve-balls the band likes to throw at its listeners. "Pictures of Paradise" ends with a completely unforeseen clean guitar passage, very full-bodied and larger than life sounding. Gradually a jarring and dissonant repeated chord on the keyboard starts creeping into the mix, and while the guitarist continues his measured picking, the jarring chord grows louder and louder until it overwhelms the guitar and starts reverberating almost painfully in the listener's ears, finally ringing out as the last unsettling toll of what was a mammoth and interestingly intricate musical journey.

Most of the rest of the album follows more or less in the footsteps of this first track, though it's not really as grand. To be frank, the first two songs are the best the band has to offer. "Unknown Tribe" has a more sombre feel to it for the most part, with some more great climaxes and a huge ending of opressive doom and bellowing but melodic vocals echoing off into the distance. The lyrics are very cryptic and I can't decide whether he's growling about church-motivated supression, racial hatred or something else altogether, and so the chorus, with its bluntly spoken diatribe about a man deciding to become a rapist and murderer of young boys, doesn't really help to clarify much. Unfortunately, most of the rest of what's worthwhile on this album are shorter, less accomplished pieces and even briefer instrumental tracks. "Gothic Spring" is fairly strong, and the keyboardist in particular shows some real cleverness in the use of his instrument on these compositions with some more classical influences, but they're just not really as memorable, perhaps because those first two pieces are so angular and exhausting in their approach that the band simply didn't have the energy or spirit to persevere with such adventurous and oddly memorable fare. Also, the nebulous nature of the music and its aims, or how it is perceived to everyone but its composers, starts to become a bit of a stumbling block in its appreciation. This seems to happen with a great many overtly technical bands, and while I enjoy musicians who are not afraid to display a humbling degree of mastery over their instruments, some solid song-craft is also a requirement. The most painful thing here is that I haven't even talked about the last two tracks yet.

For they are what really comes "out of left field" as far as this album is concerned. Recorded later than the rest of the material offered here, which makes me think that tracks one to seven were the band's demo and these two "bonuses" were thrown onto the end of the release to justify the CD's printing on Massacre records, one has to wonder what the hell Babylon Sad were listening to or inspired by, and most importantly, what in the name of Hades they were thinking when they arbitrarily ruinned their fine and very progressive death metal statement with two completely useless and unwanted songs that, for lack of a better term of classification, might qualify as "industrial metal". Even if you enjoy industrial metal, I don't see how anyone could not think that these tracks completely kill the flow of an otherwise intriguing, if not universally spectacular, album. Mechanical sounding drums, rhythmically complicated but melodically simplistic riffing, processed vocals and solos that have suddenly lost their sense of melodicism and veered into random guitar noodling. In short, this sounds like Meshuggah JR., before Meshuggah started playing in a similar vein, and while it's not the most atrocious bastardisation of metal I've heard by a long shot and is even interesting if listened to on its own as an odd curiosity, it is a dire way to end the album and a huge mistake on every conceivable level. It's telling that these two songs were the last the band ever recorded, and perhaps not such a bad thing that they quickly disappeared from the proverbial radar, before they could (or felt that they wanted to) release an entire album of this sort of dumbed-down music.

i don't know how easy this one might be to find nowadays, and its certainly not worth struggling for. However, I must say that I rank the first two songs on "Kyrie", "Pictures of Paradise" in particular, as among the higher echelons of early 90s progressive death metal. It's unfortunate that we couldn't hear more from the band that was this good, but so it goes ... some artists simply don't have enough zeal or passion to strive for more. With the advent of Internet file sharing, I can easily recommend that one download "Pictures of Paradise" and "The Unknown Tribe" for their music collection and not lose sleep over lacking the rest of the album or a professionally pressed CD on their wrack.