Deinonychius

One-man black metal band with heavy keyboards.

The Silence of December

1996

Cacophonous

Production: Clear, somewhat arid and electronic, but representative. Guitar sounds like a buzzing rubber band, perhaps an electronic artifact. There is some kind of cyclic looping distortion and a seething background abrasion, not as heavy as crunch but more digital dispersion of sound.

Review: Despite the throat-throwing vocals that rasp and scream like Burzum, and the sawing rhythm of these riffs, there is nothing of original importance here but a relatively predictable release that makes pleasant listening from its careful production.

Simplistic trodding riffs plod over rock n roll beats in the cheesy keyboard glare of atmospheric cheese. Heavily dramatic romantic passages bring out the worst in black metal cliché, and the music reverts to the simple punk rhythms and paced choruses that are its core. But this album is built around the keyboards, which move and evolve gracefully over atonal, simple, grating guitar; varying percussion emphasizes these moments.

Tracklist:

1. Intro - Black Sun
2. I, Ruler of Paradise in Black
3. The Silence of December
4. The Final Affliction of Xafan
5. A Shining Blaze Over Darkland
6. Under the Autumn Tree
7. Here Lies My Kingdom
8. My Travels Through the Midnight Sky
9. Red is My Blood...Cold is My Heart
10. Outro - Bizarre Landscape
Length: 59:55

Songs are structured around an uber-rhythm to a riff, abstracted from its dominant pattern of emphasis to form a structural division structure for each song. This leads to simple, gratifying patterns that rise and collide with no apparent expression other than the immanent value of such disharmonic architecture. Gothic keyboards move stagnant paces to climax and conclusion, subtle anti-events that linger in the aftermath.

A powerful framework of music in the keyboards keeps the songs from lapsing into monotony but the rest of the effect rides on the strange looping guitar noise and the fractured march rhythms that introduce each song in heartbeat pop music increments. This does not save this realease as black metal; for extended, overdramatized atmospheric metal/rock with a touch of Dead Can Dance keyboard composition, it suffices, but for the kind of complexity and design of expression found in excellent black metal you will have to look elsewhere.

Deinonychus - After The Rain Falls An Empty Sky Remains

Tracklist
1. Intro
2. A Throne On My Long Awaited Desires
3. I, Ruler Of Paradise In Black
4. A Shining Blaze Over Darklands
5. Tears Will Flow
Length: 27:30

After The Rain Falls An Empty Sky Remains (Guttural, 1997)
By uniting metaphysical meaning with existential concerns and expressing them in a genre that is both theatrical and structural, black metal runs along a knife edge between a form of clarity not found elsewhere in music, and an overloaded confusion that produces dramatic but ludicrous material. Deinonychius is the latter; simple riffs based on melodic power chord cycles churn underneath methamphetamine courier drums. This process is interrupted by grand gestures of keyboards or pauses or vocals, and mulches along like this for roughly the length of a song without achieving coherence. Together with aesthetic factors, this makes Deinonychius sound like a languid Abigor who compose riffs only of sustained chords shifting in simple melody. The keyboard playing here is fantastic but it is slaved to a compositional approach which gives it no room, and thus what one hears is screaming and pounding and disorganized guitar playing -- the vocals sound like a chihuahua, the guitars droningly repetitive -- interrupted by moments of music. It is not only the newer bands that miss the whole point of black metal despite being competent at its elements.