Disharmonization

Sweden’s Carbonized turned head’s with their debut LP ‘For the Security’ (1991), which is a deliciously weird selection of twisted micro-death metal tracks. Something of a passion project for the members of Therion at the time, FTS is avant-grind at its best. But with the follow up ‘Disharmonization’ (1993) cracks began to show. The blending of elements that are atypical of grindcore with more traditional components began to sound contrived. Let’s be right about this, ‘Disharmonization’ is a fine album. The frustrating thing about it is that it could have been finer.

It combines a vast array of influences from jazz, post punk, latino music, and occasionally some grindcore. Vocals range from the standard death metal rasp found on Therion’s music of this era, to constipated cleanly sung(?) moans a-la Thomas G Warrior on ‘Into the Pandemonium’. Clean guitars and bass abounds, clearly taking many cues from modern jazz; something that holds no interest for me but is nevertheless a pleasure to listen to. And there certainly is something to be said for the excitement of not knowing what exactly is round the corner on this album.

The problem is not so much the existence of these elements, but the execution and placement of them. ‘For the Security’ was a deathgrind album first, a weird album second. ‘Disharmonization’ is a collage of different atmospheres, instruments, and techniques, but all offering nothing beyond weirdness for the sake of it. There is nothing to knit this music together to tell a story. Which makes this a classic case of musician’s music. The offer this album makes is talented musicians playing weird-ass music for the sheer joy of it. Which means for the discerning listener, every build of tension, every intrigue, every engaging idea, is not rewarded with a pay-off, because the musicians have already moved on to the next unrelated idea. Each segment exists in isolation.

Occasionally its even guilty of ‘whacky’ overload; one can imagine the thought process behind certain passages: ‘what if we played a grindcore bit but added clean vocals and slap bass, that would be raaaad’. No, no it wouldn’t. The frustration comes not necessarily from this, but from the ghost of something more behind this. I suppose that ghost is made flesh on Carbonized’s debut effort. But for that reason ’Disharmonization’ falls short.

Many of these things can be said of ‘For the Security’ in a more primitive and twisted way. But Carbonized’s ‘Disharmonization’ just falls short in terms of being music that wants to be listened to. It is one of the weirdest albums going in extreme metal and certainly a fascinating experience with every listen. But one gets the sense that the music was not made for you, but for the sake of the weirdness. Which is not a sin in itself, but it does mean that this album falls short of being a classic.

Originally published at Hate Meditations

Two essential bands were started at around the same time in Sweden by roughly the same people, the one under scrutiny here and Therion. Both began with a string of demos which culminated on the full-length debuts, both released in 1991. Both fractions played death metal at the time as the delivery on both was less ordinary with the Carbonized effort more complex and more technical leaving the deep atmospherics and the side gimmicks (keyboards, choirs, etc.) for the Therion opus. It’s not clear what generated a higher level of interest in the Therion repertoire, but by 1993 they had already accumulated three full-lengths while the other side had just come up with the sophomore, the album reviewed here.

Both bands changed their style moving away from the rigid death metal formula, and while the Therion saga shouldn’t be a secret even to the metal novices, the one of Carbonized has largely remained forgotten and underappreciated. Another reason for this could have been the guys’ shift towards too exotic, bizarre dimensions with this “disharmonization” which presents the metal palette in its most volatile, eccentric form. The best tag for this least orthodox music at display here would be progressive jazzy metal with more extreme embellishments descending upon the schizoid delivery more or less regularly. A few death metal additives still “roam” around making the description of this “madness” even more difficult. The beginning would be very perplexing as “Frozen Landscapes” is just discordant jazzisms, flamenco guitars, and a couple of weird riffy configurations that don’t bode too much metal let alone death. “Vlad Tepes” is an obvious ode to our favourite Count Dracula as the quiet intro is quickly replaced by quirky surreal guitars and prominent bass presence, with the most outlandish tunes this side of Voivod’s “Dimension Hatross” and Psychotic Waltz’s “Into the Everflow” unleashed with Mr. Christofer Johnsson assisting on the side with an unobtrusive semi-drowsy dispassionate croon. “Lord of Damnation” brings back some of the death metal swagger with Johnsson shouting his lungs out, rending the air with thrash and crossover added to the fore the more direct cannonade starkly contrasting with the weird atonal riffs, with bass and jazz entering into a tough “tussle” out of the blue the latter broken up by the next in line slab of otherworldly twisted tunes.

“Silent Journey” is a nervy scratcher with a foxtrot-like rhythm-section which jumps up and down Johnsson providing truly bizarre listless vocals that bounce off the eclectic riff-patterns which turn to some really psychotic quasi-thrash to brutalize the environment in the second half. “Spanish Fly” starts with some nice memorable hooks, a semblance of normality amidst the total “insanity” which is amazingly sustained for at least half of the song before more brutal, also quite spacey and avant-garde, arrangements start pouring over the bewildered listener who may be able to put two and two together on the quiet piece of serenity towards the end, and on the great lead virtuoso section. “Succubus” is dissonant atonal thrash/death the guys moshing out with all the bizarre vigour they can muster, and later this cut turns into a masterpiece of original, innovative metal with tons of stylish technical riffs, a frequent change of tempos, patches of dazzling brutality which hasn’t been shaped completely yet on the works of Cryptopsy and Necrophagist, Voivod-ish futurism, and dark baroque-like atmospherics. The progressive metal number to end all progressive metal numbers, this piece can’t possibly be matched, but “Night Shadows” tries hard to sound relevant with the vociferous bass burps, the intricate thrashy accelerations, the abrupt Watchtower-esque chops, the jazz/funk playfulness, and last but not least Johnsson’s versatile performance ranging from punk-ish semi-recitals to semi-whispered deathy rasps. “The Voice of the Slained Pig” is “the voice” of hallucinogenic, disorienting thrash/death with both hard and grindcore incorporated into the frame at some stage the chaos reaching the culmination with the bizarre surreal passage splashed in the middle, after which the aggressive melee goes on unabated. “Confessions” is a quirky mixture of hectic death/thrashiness with creative riff-formulas and funky strokes aplenty all these condiments mixed in a charmingly random fashion. “Spacecraft” is an ultimately strange abrasive “alien” predating the dystopian sceneries on Voivod’s “Negatron” and ”Phobos” by a few years, with mechanical sterile guitars hypnotizing the listener who will also be “whipped” for over a min by the bizarre, illogical Mekong Delta-sque instrumental “Whip Me Darling”.

A truly innovative avant-garde recording, it followed on the steps of O.L.D.’s “Lo Flux Tube” released two years earlier, the first genuine attempt to diversify the death/grindcore genre and take it to galaxies far far away, much further than the benign jazzy alterations to which it was subjected on the Cynic, and later-period Atheist and Pestilence albums. I guess the time for such a musical upheaval had come since other similar ground-breaking records appeared at the same time: Rorschach’s “Protest”, Verwaint’s “And Now It Remains for Us to Explain”, Buzzard’s “Churp”, Kinsky’s “Copula Mundi”, etc. leading the metal conventions out of their dogmatic stance into a flexible, easy to mould dimension where anything was possible. Carbonized are a literal proof of the latter as this wild concoction of styles is just hard to believe, but is at the same time strangely listenable and compelling, of course for those who are looking for seriously out-of-the-box sagas. Fans of the debut won’t be happy for most of the time as they simply won’t have the patience to wait for something truly aggressive to occur although there are quite a few such moments. The approach is entirely different, like the guys were high on some really strong mind-altering substances with just flashes of sanity from where the more brutal, more orthodox “excursions” have been extracted, hence the alluringly cacophonic feel generated for a large portion of the time. Whether intentionally or randomly composed, the lunatic genius behind it is undisputable, and it begged to be pushed further for more creations of the kind…

And one more inevitably came, three years later, “Screaming Machines”. Lovers of the bizarre and the highly unorthodox in music should track down this opus immediately although the style is not really related to metal anymore, the band having epitomized a more varied rock-ish frame siding with both math and noise rock on top of several elaborate progressive, again not very logical configurations that could have been an influence on future eclecticists like Fantomas, Ephel Duath, Kobong, Take a Worm for a Walk Week, Xhohx, Illogo, etc. With the guys getting busier with Therion it was obvious that the Carbonized affair was going to come to an end… and more than a dignified one for sure, if you ask me; bizarre, screaming, disharmonic… you can’t name it.

I’m not gonna keep this review long. Why? Because I was – and still am – extremely disappointed and unhappy with the way the music of Carbonized went after their debut album. I really like this band’s early stuff. “Au-To-Dafe” and “Recarbonization” demos, “No Canonization” EP and finally “For the Security” LP are great pieces of unique, slightly grinding Swedish death metal. It was very good, a bit experimental and sometimes progressive but brutal stuff, which definitely belonged to some of the most original recordings in the early 90’s. And then Carbonized recorded this… something. “Disharmonization” is extremely different and musically incomparable to anything else they’ve done before. Yes, it basically has nothing in common not only with the previous Carbonized recordings, but with death metal at all. This music sounds sick, almost kind of schizophrenic, due the way how it sounds and switches between many weird riffs, styles and ideas.

I guess you can say that “Disharmonization” is sort of a fusion between prog rock, jazz, funk, fuck knows what else with Voivod and a very small touch of death metal or metal in general added to have an even weirder effect. Right from the first song you’ll be like “what the hell is that??”. Where are the chunky, heavy, sometimes twisted riffs of Carbonized gone? Where’s the brutal growling gone?

The opening instrumental song is as bizarre as it is useless. I don’t like how Carbonized opens this album. And I don’t like what follows. “Vlad Tepes” greets us with really bizarre riffs, which have an almost painful effect, because you’ll feel like this sick melodies are drilling your head and give an instant headache. Guitar parts aren’t aggressive at all of course. I mentioned that it all sounds like an incomparable fusion of many non-metal genres, with weird, sometimes almost annoying and cacophonous riffs and vocals, which have a clean, but really mad tone. I bet you’ll listen to “Vlad Tepes” and wonder what is going on there. I’m glad that the next song “Lord of Damnation” contains a few heavier (death??) metal riffs, there’s even a nice grinding fast part and harsh growls of Christopher Johnsson. But that song is an exception, as the majority of the album is exactly what a title like “Disharmonization” can describe. Sometimes it all sounds out of tune, other time it sounds if someone drunk was making noise on the guitar… and you know, I don’t care, as it all sounds absolutely shit to me. I really don’t like this album. When I bought it I felt disappointment, but I wanted to give it more listens and see if I can find method in this madness. But I never did. And I still cannot force myself to like “Disharmonization”. Sure, there are some fragments that will remind you of the brilliancy of the debut LP or EP, like “The Voice of the Slained Pig” and “Lord of Damnation”… but it doesn’t matter. But the whole album is barely listenable and surely far from what I like to hear. Such hybrids hardly ever work well and to be honest, I prefer pure and simple death metal rather than experimenting with sounds and styles.

Standout tracks: “The Voice of the Slained Pig”, “Lord of Damnation”, “Spanish Fly”
Final rate: 45/100

Giger-esque (I'm thinking the artwork is heavily inspired by) art is almost always a sure sell for me, as there is something about the oddly tranquil Feminine staring directly at me, all the while entwined in cold-hue viscera and mechanized sexual organs. It is sexy, in a "I wish I looked as good as that highly distorted male archetype" type of way, and it just works with bizarre and sensual heavy metal.

That of course leads us to "Disharmonization," the well liked schizo-grind middle child from Carbonized.

Comparable to Celtic Frost’s left hand turn “Into the Pandemonium” by virtue of its mix and match method, here lies a moment in time where the inspiration and enthusiasm becomes endemic. Like "Pandemonium" doesn't always connect perfectly, but always endearingly. Some of the clean vocals are also a dead ringer for Tom Warrior’s lusty sounding moaning on said album, which likely give the more sensitive among us erections. Of course, Carbonized is built upon a grindcore chassis, which is thankfully used liberally as the album gets going in its runtime.

Each track has highlights, beginning with the rather melodic and loose 'Frozen Landscapes,' leading gently into the gothic 'Vladtepes' and then crash hard into the horrific/infectious maw that is 'Lord of Damnnation.' Alternating within individuals songs and in track succession between many moods and speeds provides a consistently involving experience. The best parts remain the most orthodox in their approach, with the furious 'Voice of the Slained Pig' (Simon's vision from "Lord of the Flies?"), the insistent 'Succubus' and climatic 'Confessions' keeping the ass kicking moving. That isn't to say that the most psych moments witnessable in 'Silent Journey,' 'Night Shadows,' and 'Spacecraft' aren't going to earworm you for the rest of your days however. Special mention goes out to the startlingly beautiful and adept instrumental 'Spanish Fly.' Even the afterthought 'Whip Me Darling!' is enjoyable as a wind-down tease.

Admittedly, there is enough of a novelty to the sounds themselves to the album at least intriguing to the non-listener, and therefore could be interpreted as less substantial work as result. I disagree for the reason that the intensity and atmosphere can easily take said tourists right out of their safari in the same instant. Always a hard juggling act, but who are we, the listeners, to judge creativity too harshly? I can rightly say that sincerity (or at least my version of it) is always the best sell. After all, these guys are "inventing" English words with the abandon of a acid riddled Judas Priest. Only several of the songs have printed lyrics in the booklet, which adds a bit of mystery to what is being roared about, but the ones we get are good enough.

This is a cool album, and minor classic in favor of the Swedish realm. For those metalpeoples looking for an old school deathgrind grafted with some psych-jam-jazz (who even cares anymore?) and weirdo vocals there is little not to like here. And as a result, it never really leaves rotation for long. In fact, just about everything this band did prior and after to this is damn compelling and at the very least furious. But "Disharmonization" screams cult with gusto and it tastes good.

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