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Yes, balls of steel. You can
substitute a less sexist way of describing courage if you like—feel
free. But to practice a style of music that costs a lot of money to produce
and then break one of the genre’s most sacred rules—“no singing”—so
flagrantly is as brave, in its own way, as walking into a biker bar naked.
After all, it’s not like Divine Syndome are “selling out”—for
one thing, this is their debut album, the one that will establish their
reputation or hinder it considerably—since the addition of clean vocals
isn’t going to succeed in selling a style of music with the word “death”
in its name to the general public. No, only decreased sales and verbal abuse
from wise-ass ‘zine editors awaits a death metal band who chooses to
haul melody and harmonies into the proceedings. And that’s what makes
Divine Syndrome so monolithically cool—they embrace their deeply felt
conflict, between thrashing apocalyptically and flexing their melodic muscles,
and display it bravely to the world. On a label that only people in their
underground scene will ever have heard of in the first place. On expensive
instruments in a costly studio for, probably, little or no profit. While
wearing their hair so long that their day-job options are permanently limited.
And occasionally singing their melodic death metal intermezzi in, you guessed
it, French. You won’t find a band in any other genre taking these kind
of risks. They’d be afraid of getting laughed at. Divine Syndrome are
not afraid, and so they get to wear the laurel—fully half the material
on Pulsatory Paradigm is straight-up kick-ass rock and roll. This
should not surprise you much if you remember rule #1. Always remember it
and it will serve you well.
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