Band:	Fullmoon Bongzai
Album:	Is All That You Deserve
Style:	Electronic, Black metal
Release date:	2012
Guest review by:	Karlabos

01. Mora & Kasida
02. Crustwerk
03. Zapre Cebrecelasie
04. Like A Virgin
05. Voidvoid
06. I Kori & I Stamna
07. It Writhes
08. CheLemmy

So guys, these Greeks are Fullmoon Bongzai and apparently they play some sort of electronic black metal.

Let's start by describing what you hear on this release: The production is terrible. Static noise. Raw. Kvlt. Sounds like I bought a two-dollar microphone on the corner and used it to record an old radio playing a tape and then saved onto the computer. Then there are the instruments. The band said something about them on their blog: "Fullmoon Bongzai is a recursive experiment regarding typical black metal mood with atypical musical instruments.", "The keyword is noise.", "No actual vocals were used". These quotes sum up about what you might expect when hearing this album. There is no guitar, which implies that there's no tremolo picking, which makes us wonder if this is even black metal at all. Plus, the drums are also artificial and they are meant to sound artificial.

Everyone who hears this must realize that there are no drums at all at the first glance. They are played in a way that reminds us of breakcore instead of black metal; and remind a lot. Breakcore drums, noise as keyboards, plus some very high pitched industrial sounds coming out of nowhere, which I didn't have much success on identifying what exactly it was. If I'm not convinced that there is not really much black metal, it makes me wonder if it's even metal at all.

Ok, so until now you know that this is odd and poorly produced stuff, and it is questionable if it belongs to the almighty metal genre. Does it mean it's bad? Not at all; even though I'm not entirely sure what the hell it is.

Perhaps those who play a minute or so of a random song on YouTube are bound to give up, but when you really take the time to sit and listen through the whole thing, you will notice that this is solid. Solid and serious stuff. It's not a joke band and it's not even meant to be, and feeling wise, there's actually some kind of psychedelic vibe to it.

The noises that I said which are high pitched and unidentifiable add a lot to the atmosphere. Even though there is no guitar, the drums and the regular noises are done in such a memorable way that makes you willing to listen to some more of it, it makes you miss the track once it's gone. It's like the analogous to the memorable second wave black metal riffs, except that they are made on other instruments. And not to mention the originality. Who thought you could use vocal samples from somewhere else, paste them onto an entirely digital made song, and still keep up the grim mood of the black metal roots?

For the ones who can take some boundary pushing experimentalism on their black metal, as well as fans of industrial black, Is All That You Deserve is totally recommended. And now I'm back to listen to it again, because those drums won't get out of my head.