AMEN RA
– mass IIII
(CD, Hypertension)
Apart from the little mistake that in roman numbers the
“four” would be written as “IV” (and imagine what will happen when
they hit release number twelve or so) this CD is a complete winner. An
awful, evil, devastating, distorting and disturbing piece of music that
follows close at the heels of last years mini-hype around Amen Ra’s third
release and first full length cleverly entitled “mass III”. This five
piece band from Belgium perfectly knows how to build a dystopian dynamic and
how to keep the tension in their long songs constantly rising and then when
the songs have reached their colossal and astounding peak, put something on
top. And they probably don’t give a flying fuck about roman numbers
anyway.
Amen Ra fall perfectly into the heavy mid-tempo
pounding that has permeated all sorts of musical transformations and
evolutions yet never ceased ever since several bands in the late Eighties /
early Nineties recieved the seed of a vision that made them turn on their
amps even more but take back the speed of the songs. There is Kyuss on the one
hand destroying every appeal that hardrock ever had, and Neurosis on the
other hand, doing the same to hardcore punk. I mean, after first listening
to either of these bands, listening to a whole lot of other music, that up
to then had been cool, suddenly felt stale and boring.
It seems at first that Amen Ra don’t add a lot that
would be important to the progression of either lines – which by the way
is not and never has been a necessity of any kind for an album to be great
– but the place they have carved out for them on the hard floor of rock is
a unique one nevertheless. And it is one that will blow your head off, if
you aren’t careful. In some way I am sure that there never can be enough
bands driving home the idea that the worls is a big pile of stink and pain,
and that the future we are headed towards is a dystopia of our own design.
Their chugging, pounding distorted kind of metal in
some points is as trance inducing as for instance the best minimal heavy
tracks of Scorn or The Bug. At the same time they are head bangingly
addictive to let all kinds of testosterone filled gestures and antics rip.
Then there is an infinite air of darkness and destruction hanging over their
dystopian vision of music. Desperateness and anger fill the voids left
behind by the inhuman and war track that is modern consumerism. There is
something primeval and self-explanatory to the deepest human fears in the
struggling bashing and uncompromising stomping of these tracks. And that is
not even mentioning the inhuman screaming.
If you need a single word to describe this album then
it would be crushing. In the sense of the big fist of a titanic god taking
his time to destroy civilization. I know that it is mythologically not
correct, because the Titans aren’t gods as such but rather the by-product
of what led to the gods inhabitating the Olymp while the Titans strayed in
the backyard of mythology for aeons without anybody caring for them. But
what I meant to say is that Amen Ra – which is by the way a completely
different set of mythology – take their time and then strike big time.
Because whatever is big never has to hurry.
All in all “mass IIII” is probably the best
hardcore album I have heard in quite some time, and then it is even
questionable if it is one at all. Maybe that is what makes it so good. It
stands amidst an ocean of stale and predictable music like a heavy iron rock
of powerful music that pounds and pounds onwards, hammering home its vision
with all the might it may muster.
