METAL TEAM UK
When The Axis Of Perdition dropped the hour and a half of narration set within twisted, disturbing soundscapes that was Urfe it's fair to say that they split their fanbase; some left the room confused, bored or with an intangible feeling of betrayal. Others (myself included, for reference) clambered on board and let it carry us on a dark and twisted journey that left us silently mouthing incoherent noises and blinking in the gloom too stunned to explain. This, then is the final chapter in Urfe's journey through a decaying, filth and rust ridden world. And after the last double album I truly had no idea what I was plunging into within Tenements. None.
"Am I dead? "
"Of course not, Mr Urfe. "
It's a bridge rather than an intro, the deceptively quiet dark, ambient noise that The Axis uses to carve out those sick, decaying industrial cathedral landscapes. Sepia and rust through a grained film, stains on concrete that could be blood or shit or both. Or worse. Joining Urfe to its final chapter. Then the ground vanishes and you are falling into a void which has precious few reference points. It has song titles this time; Unveiled. Unbound. Sigils & Portents. The Flesh Spiral. Dark Red Other. Changer. Disintegration. Ordained. Awakenings. These are the narration this time, other meaning is scraped from the half caught strangled barks and shouts of the words within the songs.
I say songs. But for the first five tracks of Tenements you are pulled, scraped and mercilessly hammered down by a maelstrom of industrial riffage, malignant drumming and the chaotic scratching of the increasingly discordant keyboards and guitars. There may be songs by title and even shockingly recognisable melody and clear vocals may appear briefly in Sigils & Portents, but this is no less difficult than its predecessor. It is monotonous. Not altogether tedious; just monotonous in its determination to render down your stamina by its lack of shape or development and the constant disturbing writhing. Transformation through the repetition of no real shape, or through the imposition of a chaotic but unchanging atmospheric template over each song? I don’t know. But once again I see fans splitting and re-splitting. Some will like the return to aggressive music while others may well simply find this a long single passage that sounds too unvaried in tone and atmosphere despite the myriad of things going on with the guitar and keys. I am disorientated. I'm not in the Transition Hospital or in the world of the last album.
The tangle of blackened limbs and twisted metal clears on 'Dark Red Other'. It carves out a dark, cavernous knave of creaking and dripping metal rot, Lustmord tinged malevolence creeping through before the maw of 'Changer' and the crumbling, darkly brilliant racket of 'Disintegration' swallow you once more.
The exit from this journey is through the eerie portals of the Arcturus style neoclassical baroque insanity of 'Ordained' with its deadly serious sense of self, and then the coda of 'Awakenings'. The latter also being the ante chamber to the harrowing that has gone before, so it brings us back full circle to the first track on Urfe. Voices collapse into themselves reminding us that it begins and ends with Pylon. There isn't just relief, but also a slow crystallisation of the album taking shape even as it recedes, as I look back at it.
It's the sudden realisation that this moment started with the first sound of Urfe and that Pylon is the guide through his transformation, that these last few songs would not have worked without the belligerent single tone of those early tracks. Pylon is the occult guide who takes you through these trials for this revelation: Induction, Destruction, Enlightenment, Rebuilding, Release.
I have to return to that beginning to know if this works.
So I take out Urfe and start my journey again. More than two and a half hours later I return to this spot. It is a hard journey and one you wont make often as it is disinclined to allow you to dip in, so is it worth it? Well listened to with Urfe, Tenements (Of The Anointed Flesh) is amplified. The unvaried passages are now something that really does drift badly for me but slowly and deliberately pulling itself out via 'Dark Red Other' to 'Disintegration'. It is a test of determination. But in a way, for me, it is also what makes that final part work so well. It brings it into such sharp relief that you are suddenly reconnected to the journey beginning and that.. that works so very well.
I really don't know how to judge it. Once more The Axis Of Perdition deliver one more headfuck to the world.
Lurking in their derelict industrial wasteland, they continue to be the relentless kind of wrongness that bends and buckles reality into angles that simply don't exist in their genre. I think Urfe pushed them so far out from what Black Metal of any stripe is meant to be that Tenements is either their way of trying to find another door back inside just as fellow different-drummers Blut Aus Nord did after the equally-but-differently divisive 'Morte', or this is The Axis Of Perdition sacrificing their last reference points and cutting themselves adrift in the chaosphere. We shall see.
As a stand alone album Tenements is a curious artefact. I suppose that the presence of the creaking blackened psycho industrial metal of a great deal of Tenements may lure back some who faded away during or after Urfe. But taken from that point of view, for those wanting a return to the Transition Hospital, I would find way too little variation in the metal chaos to make it worth my while. That first third may even disappoint some who loved Urfe. But if you can make the entire journey, this is part of a set of work that will stick with you forever.
I guess I'm in the latter court, for all it's difficulties.
Whatever, I wish The Axis Of Perdition good fortune as we need bands as determined to just follow their own path as they are. For me they continue to be peerless and essential and frustrating and difficult and rewarding in equal measure. Great music in other words.
Just be prepared to make sacrifices to it to get out the black gold inside this.
http://www.myspace.com/theaxisofperdition
http://theaxisofperdition.com/
Gizmo