![]() ![]() ![]() There is probably a point at which the very brutishness and outlandishness of the heaviness actually becomes brilliant, at least to some people. But there’s a sense of style that enables spidery guitar scales, impossibly fast drumming, and gravel-gurgling vocal delivery to come together into a package that plants a big stupid grin on the face of its listener, and that sense is regrettably absent for much of this album. And it’s not as though brutal technical death metal is inherently boring, it most definitely isn’t. After sitting through the preceding thirty-two and a half minutes, it’s not inconceivable that you’d be pretty checked-out, and unable to appreciate these back-end gems. The end, mind you, of a forty-five-minute record, which is just far too long for music this manic and intense. It’s unfortunate that the two (probable) best songs come right at the end (“Molecular…” and “Hysterical Mirages of Otherworldly Calamity “). Not that the music isn’t also complicated here, just channeled into a cohesive and engaging shape.īlackened Cerebral Rifts could be very good, because it sometimes is. A mishmash of acrobatic rollovers and gymnastic fills, the best of which can be found on “Aural…,” “Kaleidoscopic Visions of Porous Obsidian Eternities,” and “Molecular Degeneration Upon Warped Onyx Stoves.” While much of the musicianship remains an apparent effort to be as complicated, confrontational, and, admittedly, cool as possible, there’s actually a point during “Infinitely Plummeting into Violet Portals of Delusion” where Daniele almost seems to channel Innumerable Forms with layered, doomy, reverberating guitars and crawling percussion. The drumming-despite a maddeningly loud and aggressively grating snare tone much of the time-is magnificent. He proves his fast fretwork in convoluted riff patterns (“Aural Interference with Uncanny Subconscious Frequencies” 1), noodling (“Meticulously Unravelling the Serpentine Consciousness”), stomach-churning soloing (“Tragic Ascent of Absurdity’s Pale Moon”), and even his ability and willingness to craft melody and atmosphere (“Hopeless Desire for Reprieve”). The sole known entity behind Dead and Dripping, Evan Daniele, is clearly talented. Blackened Cerebral Rifts by DEAD AND DRIPPING But as close as Blackened Cerebral Rifts may be to its perverted brethren in many of its attributes, it’s a world away from them in actuality. To contrast this with Dead and Dripping’s pong-snare-saturated, gurgle-vocal-gorged, squealing-discordant-guitar-heavy work, and complain that the latter is unappealing may seem hypocritical, or just weird. ![]() Ugly, dissonant, yet weirdly very aesthetically pleasing. While similar acts like Sarmat, or Asystole make incredibly inaccessible music (to about 99% of the human population), their skill in crafting intelligent, subversive, and ultimately, gripping compositions renders their work worthy of high praise. There’s such a fine line between brilliantly bonkers brutal and brainless boring ear-bashing isn’t there? At times like this, I think about how ridiculous all this hair-splitting would appear to someone outside the metal-verse. Technical in its elements, it remains brutish in execution, such that even those into the grindiest and ugliest of extreme music may take issue with its incessant cacophony. Blackened Cerebral Rifts-which I continue to misread as Blackened Cerebral Riffs-is a brutal, ugly, mass of metal instrumentation vomited violently over its listener with no concern for their constitution or their patience. But I was safe to assume not only that their latest installment would differ from the kind of thing I usually cover, but that its contents would prove almost as trite as their classically evocative moniker. Because, no, I hadn’t heard of Dead and Dripping before, despite this being their third outing. Maybe it was just the name Dead and Dripping which amused me with its stereotypical death metal disgustingness. Maybe it was the trusted Transcending Obscurity label, or the pleasing purple color scheme (though not the art itself, which is definitely not pleasing). Maybe it was a genuine desire to get out of my comfort zone with some straightforwardly grimy death metal. ![]()
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