Eschaton

Album Review

The third full-length release by this two-man U.K. industrial black metal project is slightly less concerned than its immediate predecessor with injecting melody into the shrieking blast-furnace/blender noise that is their primary sound. There's a guitar solo on "The Destroying Angel" that's heavily indebted to Slayer's Kerry King, and a melodic chorus on "Timewave Zero" that recalls their previous effort, Domine Non Es Dignus, but for the most part it's a savage, ugly album produced and programmed with merciless precision. The programmed blastbeats create a foundation of cold inhumanity which is matched by the nihilism of the electronically altered vocals, while the guitar riffs, which seem doubled by heavily processed, in-the-red keyboards, saw at the listener's eardrums. These guys have taken Motörhead's dictum of "everything louder than everything else" and blended it with the Tyrell Corporation (from Blade Runner) motto "More Human Than Human" to build something like a sonic Terminator. Some songs, like "Between S**t and P**s We are Born" and "The Yellow King," offer a slightly more humanistic feel, and wind up approaching (if not incorporating — Shane Embury guests on this album and plays with Anaal Nathrakh live) the fury of Napalm Death. By the time it winds down, the album does grow somewhat wearying; its constant abuse of the listener eventually starts to exhibit diminishing returns. But for much of its running time, it's the kind of record that makes you take a step backward in welcome surprise.