Music Review: Angelizer – Poison Dreams
Review by Gabrielle Faust
As the world of metal began its rapid evolution out of the early rock-influenced metal of the seventies and into the harder, more industrial experimentation of eighties, a new breed of the dark music emerged. It was a structuralist extension of heavy metal that musical purists gravitated to as it embraced heavy guttural vocals, fast guitars and darker subject matter for its lyrics without the more mass-consumed melodies of its predecessors. It was called death metal.
Born of a collision between hardcore punk and heavy metal, along with its twisted siblings black metal and thrash metal, this demented musical spawn was operatic in its construction, building layers of classically inspired riffs between short, dramatic lyrics delivered in a demonic-sounding narrative fashion usually resulting in the end product of an epic story straight from the mouth of hell itself. With the exception of a few American bands such as Sepultura and Slayer who brought death metal into the more of the mainstream culture, the genre has always maintained a distinct underground appeal, choosing, for artistic and social-cultural reasons, to distance itself from the mass-produced rock industry. Because of this passionate resistance to musical homogenization death metal has continued through the years to stay true to its original objective, no matter how many offshoots of it mutate and prosper.
While American death metal has always held a certain gritty otherworldly appeal to me, I have always found the music of the European bands to be especially sinister. In a way, it is almost impossible to put into concrete words: a heavy sense of doom and destruction which spans centuries further back than the mere origination of heavy metal music, a decadence behind the growling vocals which causes your gut to tighten and your skin to shiver. So it is with the debut album Poison Dreams by French band Angelizer. Fronted by the avant-garde horror author Sire Cedric, Angelizer is poised, I feel, to be an influential force in the world of death metal. Taking their influence from bands such as Dark Tranquility and Arch Enemy, the guitar is brutally powerful with riffs that build like a cyclone wind weaving in and out of a deep bass line and a steady, torrential hammer of percussion. Cedric’s demonic storm of vocals is astounding in its intensity, causing the hairs on the back your arms to stand on end. Though Poison Dreams only contains four initial songs, it is a brilliant introduction for this new band, which will definitely attract a steady following of devoted fans. I heard that their first show recently drew over 200 people, an amazing feat for any new underground band of any genre. And it is a well-deserved turnout.
Death metal fans should definitely add Angelizer to their list of new bands to check out. So far, they have delivered honest, raw metal in its purest form and I look forward to hearing what evolves from this new formation. Currently the album is for sale online through Sire Cedric’s website.
More information on Angelizer and their current projects can be found on their MySpace.
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