If bands like Bone Awl and Akitsa, following the primitive steps of others such as Ildjarn, opened the doors to a whole new vision of how Black Metal and Punk could converge into some of the most hateful and raw results the style has ever seen, the reaction to that was that a small new wave of younger bands followed that vision and started to create their own response to the genre. Amongst them we may find better and worse results, given the simplicity of the music and the ability of the musicians which, in all honesty, sometimes is pretty weak. But if I had to pick one of the best successors to those two bands mentioned above, that would definitely be Malphas (the Canadian ones, as there are at least six bands with that name), a very recently formed duo emerging from somewhere in Toronto, in the Ontario province of Canada, with a very short recording history consisting of a first demo from 2015, which they entitled 'Pre-Demo', and this new recording I'll be speaking about. The title of this tape is 'La Terre Disparue' (The Disappeared Land), including 6 tracks (one of them being some popular nationalistic song which I must honestly say I found quite cheesy, probably due to my lack of interest on those matters) and an amazing dose of pure energy flowing, no matter if it is to puke their disgust for the modern world and society, to show their melancholy for the past times or to chant their love for nature. The fact is they let you perfectly feel it, with an angst and a viscerallity that only two styles can matche so incredibly well. Because of their uptempo beats and their straight to the face razor-like rythms, which confirm the clearest part of their Punk roots together with the spitted vocals, they may get close to the last recordings of Raspberry Bulbs, almost grazing Hardcore Punk, although they have some very clear hints of that Oi energy their neighbours from Akitsa manage so well. On the other side, when Black Metal hits their songs with its darkest pulse, they jump into some really fast and savage parts which blend very well aggression and melancholy, creating a great balance/contrast, which gets you instantly hooked. Actually, they may sound a bit more brutal than most of the bands that blend both styles, as on "A tout prix" they could remind me the first Antaeus, but they also advance some meditative Burzum-like repetitive rythms in the last part of the demo. Great tape, it shows the big potential of these guys and makes you expect a lot more. Hopefully they will be releasing some more stuff soon. knifevision.bigcartel.com soundcloud.com/knife-vision
2 Comments
JN
11/4/2016 07:04:33 am
They are actually from the Toronto, ON area.
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About ...Gia Thanatos is a webzine dedicated to music for the apocalyptic times. No matter the scene or genre it comes from, and mainly chosen according to its author's taste. Archives
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