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Plasmodium - Towers Of Silence review




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Reviewer:
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20 users:
5.55
Band: Plasmodium
Album: Towers Of Silence
Release date: April 2021


01. ParaMantra
02. Churning
03. Pseudocidal
04. Translucinophobia
05. Vertexginous

Almost complete absence of rhythm, the instruments all playing random shit without ever finding each other, and brutal vocals recorded somewhere in outer space. It's a yes from me, all the way.

The cover art by Adam Burke prepares for something that is not going to be run-of-the-mill black/death metal. I mean, what even is this? A skull that cries rivers of hippy lava ahead of a background of astral dust? And what's the story with that sphere and the glowing monolith next to it?

Psychedelic, dissonant, avant-garde, and experimental black/death metal is not that hard to come by these days. What is hard to find is a band presenting something memorable and with a subtle sense of order behind all the chaos. I cannot imagine a single head left unturned at the tunes of Australia's Plasmodium and I have to warn you that Towers Of Silence is a difficult album, even for the initiated. This is bloodsucking music. The sounds heard at the outro of "Pseudocidal" and "Vertexginous" are of alien life forms sucking some poor person's blood. For sure.

Upon first listen, Towers Of Silence comes across as a pretentious / spontaneous studio rehearsal by a bunch of skilled musicians. The structure feels very non-existent, while the atmosphere is dense and without much breathing room. Eerie synths, electronic noises, wails of dissonant guitars, intricate drumming, terrifying but also diverse vocals, and a variety of unidentified samples seem to be conflicting and colliding for the most part rather than converging. The few times that all these elements come together to create something that can remotely be described as music are the ones that made me listen to this album a second time. And then a third. And then you know how it goes; I decided to review it.

The song sequence is also bizarre with the two first tracks being the shorter ones blasting their way into your eardrums before you have any time to realize what's happening. At this point -when you start to think that you won't be able to take much more of this torture- arrives "Pseudocidal", a mostly dark ambient and droney song. An interesting twist on this one are some blurred vocals reminiscing the more far out scenes of Twin Peaks, but the track is really driven by the drums more than anything else. I could write a whole essay about how the drums of Matt Sanders ( Gravetemple) sound awesome on this album and how incredibly good they are but instead of that, I urge you to listen to this song in particular.

In a way, the build-up of "Pseudocidal" makes it act as an intro track to the album's centrepiece of bestial proportions, "Translucinophobia". This 18-minute mammoth is pummelling almost for its entire duration with a lead guitar constantly in the background playing the soundtrack of a demented mind. This song requires real dedication from the listener, as it is the hardest one to sit through until the end due to its utterly violent nature and its exhausting duration. As much as I admire it, the battering does seem to last forever. Thankfully, the closer is an atmospheric outro partly amalgamating the ambient character of "Pseudocidal" with the lead guitar flexing of "Translucinophobia", along with some desperately haunting vocals.

The album's mix favours the drums and the vocals to the expense of the guitars, which sound distant and hallucinating. The bass is mostly heard in "Pseudocidal", which is the best song on display along with "Vertexginous". These two tracks are my personal picks, being the ones that explore more ambient territories, while also manifesting hints of logic behind all the chaotic structure.

I am not going to lie, Towers Of Silence is not the album I reach for every morning when I wake up to get me through the day. I don't even know whether I actually like it yet or not after a fair amount of listens. But I keep coming back to it despite it sitting at the left hand side of the most left boundary of leftfield music I can generally handle. It's more a fetish than it is enjoyment, I think, that makes me replay it.

In any case, the technical prowess, the cosmic experience, and the mind-bending trip it offers should not be passed up.





Written on 23.05.2021 by Only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud!


Comments

Comments: 4   Visited by: 75 users
23.05.2021 - 12:19
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Free death metal
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Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking
One day there will be no heart at all?
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23.05.2021 - 16:08
Rating: 4
Mehrad

Written by RaduP on 23.05.2021 at 12:19

Free death metal

that's probably the best description of this album
but the instruments don't blend together , like they got together and jammed and recorded the improvised jam on a low quality recorder
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Ride a horse that's cleaving through the air and space of dreams.
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18.09.2021 - 12:00
Rating: 9
Gesualdo

I totally agree with every word of the review and my feelings with this surprising album. And surprising is an increasingly rare word to use in metal music.

Bringing improvisation to a death/black context and mix it succesfully with psychedelic textures is not something common. A great experiment for me. By the way, lyrics are on the same experimental mood and are great.
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13.08.2022 - 02:57
Rating: 5
Auntie Sahar
Drone Empress
I was quite disappointed with this honestly, big step down from the debut in my opinion. Main issue is the production, on Entheognosis it was thick, bass heavy, wall of sound swirling psychedelia. That's still here to a certain extent, but the guitars sound much thinner, the drums are sort of obnoxiously ringy, and you don't get as full a dose of all the instrumentation. Shame because the debut was some pretty top notch psych death, really hoping they go back to a meatier sound like that in the future.
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I am the Magician and the Exorcist. I am the axle of the wheel, and the cube in the circle. “Come unto me” is a foolish word: for it is I that go.

~ II. VII
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