Axis of Advance
Review: Muscular power chord riffs weave melody into their powerful thrust cooperating with a characteristic style of percussion that breaks its even drive completely in fills usually in chunks of fractalized smaller size in which the playing is consistent until insufficient space remains and the phrase of percussion explodes in finality. Fast blasting, whispered guttural black metal vocals, and precise grindcore drumming at high speed complement the subtle sense of melody which fits behind otherwise chromatic and dark, entropy-ridden riff and song structure, supplanting its tonal motion with structure by hierarchical similarity.
Copyright © 2001 Axis of Advance
In the casual style of a death metal band Axis of Advance move between tempos varied from the moribund doompace to uptempo threshing with abrupt punctuations, emphasizing the melodic structure of accompanying guitar narrative. The listener is not forgotten with epic weaving of melody into landscapes of time and space agitated by furious technique and motion, using the forward motion of high energy music to allow themes a space to expand enough to be recognized, allowing numerous variants on riffs in structures bridging tonal spaces defined by families of riff motifs and allowing structural changes in tempo, tone location and direction; the resulting narrative orchestrates its events through linear music.
Complexity and speed alone would have made this gratifying, but it joins the higher echelon of artists who can make in the postmodern style a stream of esoteric data which combines in a theory of existence expressed in music, with its depth of texture and inexhaustable mood and intensity variation. A furnace against heat death and despite its fairly primitive sound and aesthetic of delivery, this violent offering affirms the power of chaos over systematic processing. For that despite its membership in the more directly assaultive style of black metal, this release encodes a high degree of experience in its shock of sound redoubt.