Produced by The Amenta
Released: October 20, 2008
The Amenta's second album is perhaps best summed up by their own press: "N0N is the fusion of white noise, shards of dissonant guitars and dense layers of radio chatter." That is indeed a pretty apt description of what is essentially a very discordant and confronting release. Imagine if Devin Townsend turned evil and kidnapped Ogre from Skinny Puppy and Justin Broadrick from Godflesh and made them work on his diabolical scheme to destroy music. N0N sounds something like that.
Stylistically aligned to the likes of Akercocke, Axis of Perdition, Zyklon and soon-to-be-touring-buddies The Berzerker, The Amenta mixes extreme metal elements like grinding, repetitive guitars and unhallowed vocal shrieks with ambience, white noise and industrial sounds to create something that, while not being quite as original as it's made out to be (see Godflesh and Skinny Puppy references above) is nevertheless far different from virtually everything masquerading as "extreme metal" at present.
N0N is a challenging listen, and I dare anyone to grasp it all the first time they hear it. It isn't catchy, except in rare moments like "Dirt" where an odd dub-style melody line appears. It's coarse and abrasive, with noise and chattering mercilessly overdubbed and multi-tracked as if the guitar parts were being recorded live at a busy railway station. The riffs are slab-like and repetitive, grinding and in some places almost a drone, a lot of the time virtually secondary to the beats and effects. There is a bunch of guests on here, including Alex Pope from Ruins and Jason Medonca from Akercocke, along with a total of two drummers (although with Dave Haley as one of them, one wonders why two would be necessary), two bassists -- neither of whom are particularly prominent -- and apparently six vocalists but in this deliberately faceless band no contribution is distinguishable from any other. It's only because The Amenta is at pains to point out that so many people worked on this that you even know this.
This is an almost impenetrably extreme volume of experimental noise meshed with metal that certainly won't appeal to everyone but those looking to explore the fringes of listenable art will find this truly compelling stuff.
- On
- Junky
- Vermin
- Entropy
- Slave
- Whore
- Spine
- Skin
- Dirt
- Atrophy
- Cancer
- Rape
Rating: 86%
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