Autarkh — Form In Motion
The blend of sounds on this album is certainly novel. It took my mind some time to get used to the meshing of 90's electro-industrial breakbeats and thunderous cinematic kettle drums with the sort of melancholic dissonant guitar work one might hear from bands like Gorguts, Pyrrhon or Ulsect (which shares a member, as mentioned earlier). The conclusion I came to after closer listening was that details were attended to; nothing was clumsily sewn together.
The result is disorienting largely because it is so technical. The songs are in odd meters, and generally not repetitive. The through-composed, lengthy figures are tremendous efforts of memorization. The vocals, handled by the combo of David Luiten and Michael Nielhuis, are all throaty and unclean, but quite expressive; dramatic howls with changing tones and voices depending on context within the song, at times a raspy, gothic desperation, at others a Jens Kidman-esque rhythmic bark that is almost rap-like. They achieve variety Kidman never has with some of the impassioned melodic yells on this album, pushing their voices to expressive heights in the climactic sections.
It's hard to call this 'industrial metal' because the most recognized artists of that genre, like Ministry, KMFDM or Nine Inch Nails, created music that was based around looping and plodding 4/4 pulses, simplifying the guitar patterns of metal, using them primarily for their texture. The idea of an electronic/metal hybrid that really takes full advantage of the complexities of extreme metal is fascinating, and has possibly never been done to the extent of this album.
The closest reference for the sound of this album is in Meshuggah's most 'futuristic' moments. Meshuggah uses electronic sounds only sparingly, but apparently does sequence much of their music on a computer while composing it. Indeed, some of this album's most technical sections could pass for Meshuggah, such as the entirety of "Introspectum" or the closer "Alignment", which is specifically quite similar to parts Meshuggah's epic Catch 33, an album that utilized Haake's drumkit samples instead of live drums.
The difference here is that the percussion is specifically, blatantly synthetic in its timbres, full of sparks, hisses and chopped bits of distortion. The sounds change from song to song, and within the song, and have much greater complexity than any 'cybergrind' type releases featuring drum machines that I have heard (such as those by Agoraphobic Nosebleed), which tend to rely on lo-fi distortion and small collections of 3-4 samples. This album embraces the digital, high quality production of modern electronic music, making some attempt to integrate its timbral complexities and spatial effects into metal. Ultimately, the metal elements are so dense that they still seem to take center stage, but it's nice to hear so much detail bubbling beneath the surface.
When the band chooses to play something a bit simpler, it is truly powerful. The Fear Factory influence of the shout-along chorus of "Clouded Aura" is chillingly triumphant, bringing back the glory days of cyberpunk music with albums like Demanufacture and Obsolete. The echo of Burton Bell's voice resounds in this chorus, and certainly, Front Line Assembly's Rhys Fulber, who produced those albums and added their cyberpunk atmospheric touches, could be said to be a primary influence for this band, who have followed in the footsteps of this particular vision of futuristic music.
This album really excels because behind its novelty, there is deep song writing, which has clearly been thought and rethought countless times. The album has a density of sound, composition and concept to which there is no shortcut. It is a true passion project. I am thrilled to see the concept of 'technical industrial metal' finally executed with skill and depth, and I would love to hear a great many more albums of this kind.