So many things that need to be said
But we’re goddamn scared of them being interpreted.
So many things that we want them to tell,
But we just don’t try to get the moral of the tale.
| They’re worth
listening to not because they’re the best death metal band—that honor
belongs to the already-mentioned Morbid Angel, who are practically untouchable.
Divine Syndrome aren’t even even the best Canadian death metal band,
though the competition’s a little stiffer in the race to that title. No,
while Divine Syndrome’s a good band and worth listening to on their own
merits, their album Pulsatory Paradigm has that rare quality that
becomes harder to find the longer one spends looking for it: it’s completely
and utterly bizarre. The main thing that makes Pulsatory Paradigm
a total weird-me-out fest is that it is clearly in conflict with itself
about whether it wants to be a death metal album at all. Certainly few hardcore
death metal purists would accept it, on the grounds that it’s far too melodic
and features the death metal equivalent of high heresy, i.e., a vocalist
who, in addition to practicing the standard death metal singing approach
of trying to sound like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, actually sings.
That he’s a fair enough singer is completely beside the point; he could
be Pavoratti for all anybody’d care, but breaking into song in the middle
of a death metal number would still sound about as sensible as Blossom Dearie
busting out a little “Mandatory Suicide” in the middle of “Manhattan.” But
sing he does, and quite suddenly, just as the album’s establishing a pretty
strong death metal vibe—on the second song, the guitars run through
super-technical phrases, the drums bursting impeccably into breakneck fills,
the vocals rasping and growling like a drunk with a crushed larynx. And
then, on the third song, which had already given a little advance warning
by opening with some minor-key guitars and rain effects evocative of a film
score, we are thrown from beautiful, ugly-ass loud-fast-rules death metal
into an earnestly voiced, cleanly sung chorus that, in heavily accented
English, goes like this: So many things that need to be said But we’re goddamn scared of them being interpreted. So many things that we want them to tell, But we just don’t try to get the moral of the tale. |
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