reviews / 2014

CLOAK OF ALTERING - Plague Beasts

Name: CLOAK OF ALTERING – Plague Beasts
Item: Plague Beasts
Rating: 5.5
Author: Francesco Nunziata

2014 (Crucial Blast)

cyber black-metal

by Francesco Nunziata

5.5

Having found a home at Crucial Blast, this latest project from the tireless Maurice De Jong continues to storm the garrison of black metal with a spastic, chaotic approach.

From the opening title track onward, the combination of mechanical-metallic pummeling and horror-movie atmospheres, bastardized by a symphonic and sci-fi edge, is amplified by the insertion of breakcore and drill'n'bass elements. The result is a coldly off-putting sound ("White Inverted Void", "Altering Forever"), in which even the scream ends up losing its human character, transfigured as it is into an alien tangle of crude, more or less intelligible declamations parading in the background like a caravan of android zombies. The hyperactive nature of these tracks brings to mind the most extreme experiments of Abu Lahab (a name itself influenced by the many musical disguises of the Dutch artist), but also, in its most hyperkinetic moments, the harshest cybergrind (Kusari Gama Kill could be a good reference point).

In short, there seems to be a seething circulation of ideas down there in the undergrowth of the most extreme music.

Although here and there a few encouraging signs do slip through (for instance, "Into Celestial Hell" isn't bad at all, with its more overt nods to the Gnaw Their Tongues universe), De Jong still fails to convince in the guise of Cloak Of Altering, too often driven by an overly maximalist streak that just gives you a headache.

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21/05/2014

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Francesco Nunziata, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition