FACELESS PHENOMENA

Faceless Phenomena is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish avant garde rock/ metal act Whirling. The album was released in February 2010 by Eisenwald. The band is a three-piece that play basic rock/ metal instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums. There are a very limited use of keyboards on the album too.

The music on the album is in the avant garde metal/ black metal vein of Ved Buens Ende, Virus, Kailash, Apocryphal Voice and their ilk ( all influenced greatly by the dark/ bleak rockers in acts like Joy Division, Bauhaus and Holy Toy). Twisted dissonant rock/ metal riffing, monotone depressive vocals, the occasional black metal outburst/ section and a raspy vocal delivery by guest vocalist P. Gustafsson could be a way to describe the music. If you know the genre you won´t find Faceless Phenomena surprising, but it´s certainly well composed, well played and very entertaining. The songs are also pretty varied for the genre and the band generally have a lot of creative ideas.

The production suits the music very well. It´s dark and has enough grit and distortion to sound authentic. Music like this would die with a polished clean production.

Faceless Phenomena is a great debut album by Whirling and while I know some people will shout words like "clone" and "plagarism" at the album, I´m a sucker for this kind of music, so I can forgive Whirling and their not so original style of music. The quality of the music is high though, so it´s not only my preference for the genre that leads me to rewarding the album with a 3.5 - 4 star rating. But of course you´re welcome to substract a half star if you feel I´m a bit too much in fanboy mode. My personal opinion about the album aside, I still find Faceless Phenomena highly recommendable to fans of any of the above mentioned acts.