Never led it be said that Absu leader Proscriptor McGovern isn’t a true original spirit when it comes to the wild and crazy world of extreme metal.
In fact, ‘crazy’ is quite an appropriate word to describe the conceptual madness which lies behind McGovern’s over-the-top esoteric concepts and frenetic compositional style in the world of Absu, with the band’s latest effort, Abzu opening up in resounding fashion.
McGovern lets go with his best, high pitches metal scream on “Earth Ripper,” a black thrashing power which surprisingly echoes such earlier Absu efforts as The Third Storm of Cyrthraul and the In the Eyes of Ioldanach EP more so than the thickly produced and expansive Tara LP from 2001. Not that Abzu is lackluster; certainly not. In fact, it’s good to hear this long-standing and respected Texas entity on its creative game again, despite the fact that former iconic members Shaftiel and Equitant haven’t been involved with McGovern in quite some time.
Still, I think I was expecting a bit more from Abzu right off the bat. High expectations, perhaps? Maybe, because Abzu still capitalizes on the band’s Celtic origins and old school thrash influences with convincing abandon, enhanced by Proscriptor’s unpredictable, uncontrollable power behind the drum kit. Only the album’s thin-sounding production hampers Abzu and its otherwise admirable black metal attack, as evidenced by standout killers like “Abraxus Connectus.”
When it comes to homegrown, U.S. black metal, Absu are old salts at this point; a reliable institution who always deliver the goods, while retaining a level of respect earned by unerring focus and diehard honesty. Nicely done.
Recently Metal Army caught up with Chris Gamble of GOREAPHOBIA who recently released their new opus Apocalyptic Necromancy. Chris spoke candidly with us about a great many topics. What follows is an excerpt of our chat.
MAA: Take us through the making of Apocalyptic Necromancy.
CG: Well, making the album was a natural process. We were running really good on a lot of high focused energy. Mortal Repulsion became a second lifeline for the band. Alex (Bouks) and I reformed the band and when we started playing GOREAOPHOBIA out again, it was 2004. When your band gets to about the twenty year mark, you start to see things. You see through the crap, all the trial and error things and stuff like that. The things that you learn along the way start to help you, you hope those things you learned, the experience you’ve got sticks with you for the better. Alex and I, in our minds we like to do our music. Our music has never changed, our music never went anywhere. For so many years we just had so many wrong people with us. Members that didn’t really belong, into their own personal gain and own personal demons really. All selfish people, people dealing with their own demons and on the business side we never had any help, it was all us. From 1988 to 1992 it was just chaos. Nothing was focused or set in stone and every thing was for the now, every man for himself. We learned a lot from those years and when we put out Mortal Repulsion, we got that out and we got back out there. When we toured the states with MASTER we got a lot of great feedback from old fans, and made new fans. A lot of old fans came out from the days when you had to write letters to bands, before email. It showed us a lot doing those tours and Mortal Repulsion really showed that when we had all this new focus and energy. It felt like 1988 again. And we added our new guitar player VJS and I just started writing songs like crazy. We started jamming, putting things together and writing a new album. Drummer Jim Roe has all the recording gear in his own studio so as we wrote, we recorded the songs. Everything with this album has been relaxed and now we have four song writers in the band. Alex has been predominantly the songwriter. Eighty-Five percent of Mortal Repulsion was songs Alex had for years on the shelf. But now all of us have been coming in with songs. Jim and VJS had a lot of ideas. So after the last album we had a much sharper and more refined focus on it this time.
MAA: Where do you draw inspiration from musically and lyrically?
CG: Lyrically for me, between these two albums I’m not really a social butterfly on the internet. I am a social butterfly face to face. I’m an in person guy. I like to be in the present. So what I did was go on a bit of a hiatus. And I went back into doing things I normally do which is going back into a retrograde, back into the occult sciences. Everything I learned the last twenty years, looking through my personal life and going through a whole new process again. Breaking myself down and building myself up again. Reevaluating my feelings, thoughts and emotions. All of those aspects and theories helped me write the lyrics, which is how you do it really. And the overview of it was really a benefit because the songs really came together really quickly, one after another. I hope people get the album and with me, everything is important. The songs, the lyrics, song titles and the artwork. Everything comes into play and compliments everything else. I am a fan too and I always liked albums by bands like VOIVOD and CELTIC FROST. There is something you can remember from all of those albums. The artwork and the lyrics, certain parts people just gravitate to. Everybody is wired different and something initially pulls someones interest. When you put that attention to everything equally you give people more to get in to. I love THE WHO’s Quadrophenia and Tommy. I love RUSH and MOTORHEAD albums the same way. The details always stick out to me and what I learned, I try to apply it and give something back to the fans.
MAA: What has new guitarist VJS brought to the band?
CG: Personally I’ve known him for a little while. I knew him before Jim and Alex did I still do BLOODSTORM, but its on the shelf right now. In 2005 we did a tour when he was out on tour with KULT UV AZAZEL. We had some mutual friends like Tom King, the drummer of BLOODSTORM and they had the same friends and and I know the same people it’s like people say “Hey! I know a guy, a pretty good guy”. The thing I like about having VJS in the band is he is an occultist too. I feed off of that because he is darker natured and occult orientated like me. VJS wrote “Rust Worms” and it’s one of my favorite tracks off the album. Actually it is a very rare occasion when I write lyrics to someone else’s music. Normally I just write lyrics and try to match it to music later. But when he wrote “Rust Worms” and I heard it, I immediately wrote the lyrics based on that song and I’ve only done that a few times in my existence making metal music. And he has good live energy. I don’t like to stand in one spot, you gotta move! Like the VENOM video for “Witching Hour”. I saw that as a kid and thought that’s great and you gotta do that! VJS came into the band and he has more of that and that’s what I like. It works.
MAA: How has death metal changed from when you started to now. Is the genre better or worse today?
CG: My opinion has never changed as far as my standard goes. I still see things they way that I saw them in 1988. But the world changes and so people changed too. Sometimes you have to change with it. That’s life. I try to adapt to and somethings I refuse to adapt to. Everything these days is about time, time, time. It’s parasitic and it takes away. Everyone is so focused on getting their album out on time and keep to a schedule, tour and do this and that all. It’s all about business and I’m not a business guy. I’ll probably be damned for saying this but I’m more likely to give away our fucking merchandise than sell it. It’s the sharing of it that is more important to me. To pass those things on. Only a few few people can make enough money from their band to live off of it. For the bands that used to sell records and think they were going to make a nice living off of that, that boat sailed off the island about fifteen years ago. And the last survivors from that boat left in 1995 when the internet started to take off. The last year I went to a Milwaukee Metalfest was 2000, when people still had cool records to sell. Now everybody is in a pissing contest. Out of every four people you meet, five have a band. And of those four, one might come out to a show. But I need to roll with what I know. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but those things aren’t for me. I’m not an internet guy, but if not for the internet there might be a lot less bands or no metal. It seems like a lot of people are trying to swim to a ship that has sailed. It’s not everybody but when you go to shows a lot of people are standing there with their arms crossed, looking like their too cool for the music. It’s not everybody, but I see it.
Classic.
MAA: What are the immediate touring plans for the band?
CG: The soonest thing we have is a festival out in California with AUTOPSY. Whatever happens after that, we’ll see. I’m looking forward to another release and hoping that this albums’ energy compliments what went on with Mortal Repulsion and before that. I hope it opens up peoples interest and that leads to a third album.
GOREAPHOBIA is back with their highly anticipated second post-hiatus record and it is a killer. Long time Killadelphia underground stalwarts, the band pillaged and rampaged the entire east coast on the strength of some tape trades and demos for years back in the late 1980′s and 90s. An old junior college friend of mine had the Omen of Masochism cassette single back in the day and I recall being just mind-jobbed by hearing it. My ears were a little too unsophisticated back then for true death music and the band broke up and went in to exile for fifteen long years. Coming back strong a few years ago with Mortal Repulsion (Ibex moon), I thought their debut full-length was solid and it was cool that they received the notoriety they long deserved. Now they have more than upped the ante on Apocalyptic Necromancy and I have to say the growth is noticeable. They are ready to unleash some sonic hell on people and I’m not even sure the old-school heads will be ready for what they are about to hear.
Raw and uncompromising right out of the starting blocks, this record is going to be a treat for fans and converts alike. The title track is first with its veritable tornado of riffs and drums. Alternating classic death styles shift and tug at the soul with ghastly vocal screams. There is a level of technical excellence heard under the din and the sound quality is produced, but definitely not too modern or overdone. There are great overtones of gloom and doom in the song created by some super textural guitar parts, tempo changes and hellish guitar solos. “Xurroth Reeth N’ves Helm” lifts off like a death metal IRON MAIDEN, complete with galloping riffs and thunderous drumming. If Satan was a WWE wrestler, this would be his entrance music! Bassist/front man Chris Gamble (BLOODSTORM/ABSU) sounds amazing on vocals with his gnarly, sneering scream. The entire band sounds really hot on the track with thrashy guitars and punishing bass lines too. The amazing ending guitar solo just got me right in the gut it was so good. Back to the grinding funeral march beats for “The Attractor” the band veers back and forth all record long from the true sound of gory days gone by while still tipping their cap to other types of metal. Another slick solo also marks this track as a can’t miss. The guitar team of mainstay Alex Bouks (INCANTATION/MASTER) and the more recent (like a few years ago) addition of VJS (KULT UV AZAZEL/NIGHTBRINGER) have made this the best lineup of the band ever. Another top track is “Void of the Larva Queen” which is a bit more technical and sounds like SUFFOCATION, MALEVOLENT CREATION or the slower stuff by OBITUARY. Drummer Jim Roe (INCANTATION) is just a beast here with his amazing poly-rhythmic style and fabulous footwork. “Void….” is perhaps the best and most gruesome cut on the entire album. “Shroud of Hyena” has a real doom feel to it with Gamble’s distorted bass lines and sick vocals adding a lot of character. The mid-song breakdown has a bit of kult black metal feeling to it too for good measure. Back up to light-speed, “Footpaths in the Vortex of Doom” is a masterpiece of evil music with complex progressions and rhythms. Other top tracks are “Darkstar Dementia”, “Igigi Reactor”, “Sigil on Death’s Hand” and the near atmospheric goth (death goth?) epic “White Wind Spectre”. This is a deep album from top to bottom of quality songs and great performances from all.
"Why yes! I'd love to meet your parents! And then kill them in the name of Satan"
I received an email last night with all of the information regarding a new album from ABSU, entitled ‘Abzu’. Since that time, I’ve spent probably over an hour analyzing this cover art and trying to figure out what’s going on here. The line work is really impressive here and the, what I’ve determined it to be, temple has really cool depth as well. All in all, I would say this is a pretty cool cover for ABSU despite the band usually not having good covers (with the exception of 2001′s ‘Tara’).
What you can expect from an ABSU record is the most impressive blackened death/thrash that the US has to offer. There is a reason that the mighty IMMORTAL chose ABSU to open for them on their recent US mini-tour and that reason is simple: ABSU are one of the longest running, truly impressive blackened bands in the US scene. Shitty cover overlooked, most of us in the metal community flocked to and highly praised their self-titled 2009 full length and I expect ‘Abzu’ to be no different.
‘Abzu’ is part-two of a planned trilogy of albums that began with 2009′s ‘Absu’ and becomes the first ABSU album since 1997′s ‘The Third Storm of Cythraul’ to feature a co-vocalist alongside band leader Proscriptor McGovern. Proscriptor said in a press release:
“This album has not only been the most challenging in ABSU’s discography, but the quickest paced – composition and arrangement wise. The current line-up is scattered all across the United States, so the album was physically written utilizing internet file sharing. We even rehearsed, at times, while communicating via cell phones. Lyrically, the album descends deeper into Enki’s lower world as well Thelemic and Enochian Magic(k) Systems. My lyrical architecture is extremely convoluted, so I decided to create a generalized synopsis explaining the themes behind each song. I feel these are my best poems since 2001’s Tara.”
As I stated above, I am a huge supporter of ABSU. I like that they seemingly continue to treat metal like the old school tape trading underground that it was when they began back in the early 90s. I like that they take ABSU so seriously despite that very same factor keeping the band from as many live actions as most bands these days are accustomed to. I like that there is still fire and mystique around ABSU: both the members and their music. All in all, I think that ‘Abzu’ will be a tremendous release and I look forward to hearing more as we get closer to the release date, which has been announced as October 4th.
Well, that’s the end of the week for us once again! Tomorrow I’ll be heading out to see IMMORTAL take over NYC with ABSU so let’s have a beer if you’re at the show. I also had Valentines Day and my birthday this week so I’m on a bit of a party spree, hope you have a safe weekend, head bangers!
