By: Josh McIntyre
“Imperative Imperceptible Impulse” CD//DD//LP track listing:
The Review:
There’s weird music and then there’s this. Avant-garde is thrown around a lot to describe odd metered and dissonant death/black metal bands but Ad Nauseam truly deserves the title. I don’t think that consonance is even in the band’s musical lexicon. The riffs and rhythms swarm around, constantly shifting and melting into the brain. This wasn’t made to headbang to, this is a challenging musical experiment that demands detailed attention. In other words, this needs to be listened to multiple times to appreciate.
This album in particular is much dryer sounding than Ad Nauseam’s past works and comparable bands such as Ulcerate and Blut Aus Nord. This makes the constant array of clashing guitar notes and clanging bass all the more an assault. This physicality combined with the unpredictability of the rhythmic flow of each track honestly makes me feel anxious. It’s like being lost in a dark cave. You can’t see anything, you don’t know where you are, and every little sound frightens you.
It’s damn brilliant. This record is getting a lot of high marks and for good reason. While being clearly inspired by a certain school of experimental metal the band takes it to another level. The aggressive left/right panning of the two guitars that almost always play highly contrasting riffs might be the most notable factor here. At all times the brain is listening to at least two different patterns and the natural desire for some kind of melodic or rhythmic resolution is thrown out the window like a helpless, unwanted child. Still, in the midst of this chaos the band does provide for slower, quieter moments of slight relief, a factor that allows listeners to bear the journey in addition to being enjoyable in itself.
Ad Nauseum is far from the first death metal band to reference 20th century classical music or jazz but those influences, I suspect, give the greatest rise to the intense atmosphere and discomfort at display. At times I’m even reminded of the bleakest parts of works by The Caretaker, the ambient/sound collage artist that seeks to create the musical equivalent of the human mind deteriorating from dementia. It’s even comparable to the surreal horrors of Bosch’s depictions of Hell or the terrifying phenomena in a Junji Ito universe. If someone asks you what fear sounds like show them this album.
“Imperative Imperceptible Impulse” is available HERE
