ANAPHYLACTIC
SHOCK – 2000 years
(CD, Hypertension)
I think I need some epinephrine, quickly. I feel as if
I have been mauled and mangled and hit with a blunt instrument repeatedly.
Then my heart stopped bleeding and my eyes bulged out and a single moment
felt like a couple of hours, while my life drifted past me and I realized:
mankind equals shit, evolution is going in the wrong direction and finally,
not too far away, everything will end in a big pile of stinking shit. It is
take or break time and it might be for another two millenniums. The cold is
already creeping up on me. I hear the best walking the earth.
Anaphylactic Shock describe their music as a kind of
doomy rock with extreme vocals. But yet it is so much more, mostly because
that description does not sound heavy, but it is. (In this respect the
Onlinde-Database my player gets his info from is more correct with tagging
this album “heavy metal”, which goes to show that trying to be more
right makes you turn out wrong anyway.) “2000 years” contains a sludgy,
downtuned miserable beast of heavy rock with vocals that can’t decide
between screaming and growling, and may be something that you don’t want
to encounter late at night in a dark alleyway. The sound is distorted and
dense, pounding and punishing the way you would expect it.
What makes this band’s music stand out is the self
evidence and the and ease with which they tread in the mid- to low tempo
area. Most bands would try to hide their lack of whatever and their will to
be very extreme in either playing totally slow or totally fast – both of
which becomes obvious and boring after a time, unless for the best of the
best of each competition. Anaphylactic Shock stay cosily in the burning hell
of midtempo where they melt the extreme visions of dark and psychotic
hardcore (does anybody remember the term crust?) with the darkness and evil
of classic metal. A fine mixture, perfect to set fire to something, be it
the system or your sofa.
Where this band is headed lyrically, is easy to track
down: on to a rather bleak and misanthropic future. Take “The future
floats bleak and ugly” as a hint before chosing “death over life” or
even “abandon all hope”. And there probably is still this point to make
over and over again, that most of what is happening seems to go into the
wrong direction, that life is shit for most people and that happy-go-lucky
indie-bands with meaningless lyrics won’t ever cut the crap and effect any
kind of meaningful change. On the other hand, the main reason for a lot of
things being so shitty is that god or nature have a weird sense of humour
and that’s all. I mean, what is evolution’s / intelligent design’s
reason for Paris Hilton? Who in his right mind could ponder this paradoxon
and not start stabbing people in a shopping mall? You got the point.
