Rvbber VVitch — Mastvrbations Malveillantes MMXVII
The album cover features a black and white photograph showing a seated figure wearing a black latex hooded cloak and latex mask. Smoke or fog swirls around the figure, giving a ghostly feel. In the lower right corner of the cover is the projects logo, which is a stylized, slightly distorted plain print font. The album title is written in white Gothic capital letters, appears vertically on the right side of the cover. I can say that the photo is quite effective and original, and sets the mood before listening to the album. To be honest, at first I thought it was a picture of Darth Vader, however, I realized it wasn't. The overall impression of the cover is somewhat spoiled by the location of the logo and the album name. In my opinion, these two elements should be in different proportions and located in a different place.
The album is just over forty-seven minutes long and consists of six tracks. Rvbber VVitch presents the listener with a rather harsh and extreme Death/Black metal blend that's even mixed. Along with classic guitar tremolo, there is a fairly large number of death metal riffs here. The solo guitar parts are completely absent here, as well as clearly expressed melody. The melodies here are replaced by riffs and chord harmonies. Each track is quite diverse in its compositional structure – with several rhythm and tempos switches. Along with the high-speed parts, there are moments of quite measured tempo, as well as points completely devoid of instruments- which nod towards industrial, ambient and noise tropes. Unfortunately, these elements are quite rare and, to be honest, not impressive enough to stand in their own right. They come off more as a collection of sounds either used to prolong the duration of tracks, or as an attempt to surprise the listener. Following this negative, it is time to move on to another- from start of the album we get a wall of rather dirty and noisy sound, which at first reminded me of a cacophony, consisting of guitars, vocals and drums. For a couple of minutes I tried to figure out the reason for such a dirty sound and realized that it was the drums. All drum parts are processed with a reverb effect, besides, the bass drum is tuned quite low, which leads to the fact that in the high-speed parts of the composition a noticeable rumble is heard, which absorbs most of the sounds of other instruments and distorts the sound of cymbals. In the slower parts, the bass drum is not as in intense, becoming possible to hear a clearer guitar sound, which, in my opinion, turned out to be quite successful - harsh, rough and dry. However, this great sound is hidden behind the rumble of drums, which are the main instrument throughout the album. Another issue, is the use of distorted vocals- these are so intense at points it’s difficult to understand what’s going-on. Of course, it makes no sense to talk about vocal timbre here. Also, I was a little annoyed that Rvbber VVitch ‘s style is presented as industrial black metal / noise. To be honest, the presence of these styles is minimal- Industrial is presented here only as parts of compositions that have nothing to do with black metal, which, frankly, creates a feeling of heterogeneity and fragmentation. Noise, in the understanding of this word, as a style of music, is absent on the album at all. Perhaps the definition of "noise" meant the overall sound in the most ambiguous and dirty sounding parts of the compositions.
To summarize, I can say that the concept/ idea behind Mastvrbations Malveillantes are intresting. I liked most of the riffs and harmonies, as well as the compositional approach to some parts of the tracks. But the implementation was not as successful as the idea. When it comes to comparisons Gnaw Their Tongues come to mind. I also heard some riffs made in the style of the early Enslaved and Satyricon from the Rebel Extravaganza album.