Praise for Bosse-De-Nage ‘S/T (II) from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Record number two from this mysterious Bay Area black metal horde, a group whose sound is as heavy on the Louisville math rock is it is on the black buzz, and on record number two, they stretch out even further, exploring their math / post rock tendencies in ways that were only hinted at on the first record. And as one might expect, the mix of black buzz and meandering post rockisms sounds much more organic this time around, where as the first time the separation between the two sounds was more jarring. The production is much improved too.
Just take the opening track, ‘Volume Two Chapter One’, with its darkly dynamic opening, all start stop minor key minimalism. A melancholy minor key melody played out over a series of chords, left to ring out, the drums crashing in time, the only hint of the blackness to come is a howled vocals way way off in the distance. It’s two minutes before this crashing moodiness segues fairly smoothly into some frantic blackened blasting, the drums not your typical blastbeat, instead offering up all manner of unlikely fills, the result a little off kilter, and a good balance to the otherwise more traditional back buzz guitar and shrieked vox. And then with about 2 minutes to go, the buzz seems to dissipate leaving just a churning, chuggy chunk of palm muted math rock, that sounds more like Don Cab than Darkthrone, pounding out the final minute in a tangle of mathy rhythms.
The post rockisms are much more subtle in ‘Marie In A Cage’, which plays more like your standard buzzing blackness, but there are those wild chaotic drums, not to mention a killer part midsong where the band switch into a brief bit of proggy mathiness that KILLS, but it’s brief and soon the band are galloping along again, never fully shedding that mathiness, but instead incorporating it into the black buzz.
‘The Lampless Hours’ is another track that starts out sounding like some lost mid nineties Touch And Go record (minus the flurries of double kick drum), before launching into a stretch of ‘proper’ black metal. ‘The Death Posture’ is a churning doomy plod, peppered with burst of blasting black metal, and again here, the band are much more subtle with their deployment of post and math rock elements, which ultimately makes for some truly idiosyncratic black metal.
And finally, the record finishes off with the 11+ minute ‘Why Am I So Lovely? Because My Master Washes Me.’, which again sounds on the surface traditionally blackened and buzzy, but the post rock undercurrent seems to seep through every chance it gets, finally shouldering the blackness out of the way at about the midway point for a stretch of gnarled mathiness, that manages to not sound out of place. Instead, it’s drawn in shades of black, that make it that much easier for the band to slip back into the furious buzz that finishes off the record, until the last minute when the recording seems to go haywire, everything blown out and distorted finishing off in a wild squall of Merzbowian white noise.
Definitely less post rocky than its predecessor, but again, the trade off is that the post rock element doesn’t sound as much like a gimmick, instead sounding more an actual intrinsic part of BdN’s sound, and while black metal dabblers may not be so inclined this time around (although they should be), true grim metalheads might just find their horizons being expanded, whether they realize it or not.
At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.
Listen to Bosse-de-Nage – ‘The Death Posture’ below.
Tags: Album of the day, Aquarius Records, Avant-garde, black metal, Bosse-De-Nage, The Flenser Records
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 7:52 am and is filed under 2011, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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