AKITSA – Au crepuscule de l’esperance CD
Hospital Productions/Tour de Garde
Years ago during my bartending and bum tossing days I had a beautiful young woman for a co-worker who was from Quebec, Canada. It was from her that I learned my knowledge of the place. In fact that’s all I got from her since she played for the other team if you know what I mean. One little tidbit of information she provided was that Quebec had a very high suicide rate compared to the rest of the country. Now I thought that was strange considering Quebec is kinda populated compared to the Western part of Canada. If you’re gonna get cabin fever and decide to end it all then I figured go west troubled man. But here we have AKITSA from Quebec and they play, wanna guess, suicidal black metal. There’s always been a discrepancy with the understanding of this sub genre which is simply, now is the band going to commit suicide or is the listener supposed to do it? My thoughts have always been the latter since some of these bands tend to linger around a while. Also they tend to put out releases in small numbers and alot of tapes or EPs with two songs. Yeah two songs are all you’ll need to kill ya.
I must admit my knowledge of Quebec black metal is limited to just a few bands. Although I do know that the La Belle Province is home to quite a few tech death and metalcore acts. As far as AKITSA is concerned I knew they had a split EP with SATANIC WARMASTER some years ago. I don’t own it I just know my SATANIC WARMASTER releases like I know the hairs on the back of my hand. AKITSA have been around for close to a dozen years now killing individuals all over the great white, or is it black, north. They’re a two piece mainly with both members, OT and Neant, sharing all instrument playing and vocals, which is a stretch to even consider them as vocals. Out of the ten cuts on here all but two have vocals, thankfully. I mean that in the most insincere way since I haven’t heard pain induced howling like this since I came home one night and found not only my house broken into but the would be thief caught in one of my bear traps. I take my home security measures very seriously. How else am I supposed to protect my rare collection of blood diamonds and ancient crystal skulls? Anyway all the lyrics are in French so if you don’t know the language you’re shit out of luck. Fortunately for me I know enough French to get my face slapped and from what else I can gather from listening to Au crepuscule de l’esperance, which means “at the twilight of hope”, is that these guys have a very dismal view on life.
Musically AKITSA spare all expenses when it comes to creating a sound that’s part nails on chalk board and part saws all scraping monotonously across aluminum sheeting. They make those Radio Shack quality recordings from years ago sound high tech. There’s some murky atmosphere tossed in from parts unknown which is a nice way of saying they know how to use feedback. All in all it’s a minimalist musical formula that rolls on like a conveyer belt to nowhere. There are one or two exceptions on here but for the most part Au crepuscule de l’esperance is a mechanical buzz with a lunatic screaming at the top of his lung capacity. I believe a few more listens to this and I’ll be taking up residence at that place with no windows, wearing a one size fits all straight jacket and befriended by the big guys in white coats. If you have any friends or relatives who are just teetering on the brink of sanity then give them this and over the edge they’ll go. I’m sure it will be fun to watch as well and you could even invite friends over to make a party of it. Just tell all your friends, Hey I’m gonna blast this new AKITSA release tonight and see if my aunt goes nuts then I can have her committed and the fuckin house is mine. But be careful what you wish for. After just a couple of plays I feel like ants are crawling all over me.
http://www.t-d-g.net/
No comments:
Post a Comment