Cacophanous! Heretical! And other blasphemes adequately describe SKÁPHES’ black metal tribute to what Joy Division done to New Romanticism. While it’s damp and saturated production is only understandable to the most hardcore of true aficionados, their discordant and messy tirade of unpleasantness dies in a disharmonious monsoon of promise. With the potential to elate the soul and illicit powerful feelings this second helping is diluted by it’s lo-fi presentation.
The mastering is terrible. There’s so much post-processing that if this album was a burger it’d be the ever cheesy burger king. Yet as Martin Sheen said on record:
“it is impossible to describe what is necessary, to those who do not know what horror means. You must make a friend of horror.”
The friends… the friends…
SKÁPHE have recruited D.G. a.k.a. Dagur of Martröð, Misþyrming, Naðra and 〇, and are a nightmarish amalgam of black metal and time travel. No, wait: delay. A reverberated sandwich of growling, howling and wailing. With the guitar riffing on wailing like a man shopping for a pint of elephant juice.
The irony of the iconic dark and harsh apocalyptic wasteland is lost to shades of grey within a gradient of extreme monochromatic austerity on here. There’s the familiar traits of black metal playing but this crust punk effort pushes the boundaries of echo like a determined dolphin with cancer, white with worry, grey by nature. Who can say what’s going on!? Talking of a delayed reaction; where’s this album going? I actually opened with this question and this is the after image. Skáphe² is everywhere but in the present.
5/10
