SEBEK

'Sebek' - Senmuth (8/10)

A new, heavy direction from Senmuth.

Before even listening to the album titled 'Sebek' by this Russian experimental artist, I had been told that this was Senmuth's crowning achievement, as far as his 'metal' music was concerned. On top of that, I had listened to dozens of lighter, ambient albums that begged for even a little bit more energy to give the music a greater matter of interest. Under both of those conditions, it seemed a perfect time to give 'Sebek' a listen. While Senmuth has had quite a few mediocre albums in his years of music-making, there have always been a select few that make the journey worth it. 'Sebek' is indeed one such album that stands out from the others, not only in it's style but also it's quality. Dare I say, but I think I've heard the best Senmuth album thus far, or possibly ever.

While much of Senmuth's work has been instrumental since the early industrial-doom metal albums of old, Senmuth's original, pseudo-melodic, distinctive yet slightly irritating vocal style are still very memorable. While the vocals did add a somewhat human flair to what was otherwise very cold, robotic music, they ultimately deterred through their distorted, weird but unprovocative delivery. While 'Oracle Octave (Part II: Sirius Mystery)' showed Senmuth opening up to the idea of death growls in his music by inviting fellow musician Lefthander to do vocal tracks for a song, 'Sebek' is the first time Valery Av does full growls in his music. While I may have been very skeptical that this would be a good idea at first, the growls here are quite powerful and effective, giving an extra edge and sense of distinction to the songs here. Barring the vocal tracks, there feels like there is a much greater depth to the songwriting here than ever before. While there are still similarities between this and the conventions of his songwriting, each track here employs a very intentional feeling of building up; something that by comparison, sorely lacks in many of the other albums.

The best written, one of the most distinctive, and- without a doubt- the heaviest album Senmuth has ever done. While the guitar tone here is pretty similar to the sound that Senmuth used to death with his early metal records, the addition of the harsh vocals, and some looming dark orchestral samples give it the extra sense of foreboding and crushing nature that sets this apart. Of course, the execution here still suffers from some of the problems all of his other albums have (first and foremost being the substitution of 'fake' instruments in the stead of real ones) but 'Sebek' is made such an impressive addition to Senmuths discography even simply based on how much of an improvement over anything else the man has done in the past.

With all having been said, 'Sebek' is the first of countless Senmuth albums that has truly dazzled me and struck me as being a truly professional-grade album for Valery Av. I always knew I would find at least one truly excellent album in this man's discography, and while it does have a few issues to yet contend with, this is undeniably Senmuth's magnum opus.

It was since "No More Sense" that Senmuth wasn't so hard. This is a metal album with no doubts. The industrial sounds are back together with Senmuth's vocals, something that was missing since a while, but this time his vocal distortion is not so disturbing as in the past.

After a short intro that's really not bad, the track two brings us directly to the dark side of the Nile, with the ethnic background overwhelmed by the distorted guitar and the heavy electronic percussions. Senmuth is not a true growler, but his screamed singing distorted by his kit sounds very "death metal".

The track's lengths go from 5 to 10 minutes more or less, for a total of 80 minutes of very heavy and esotheric music.

The ethnic moments are present also in this album and it's interesting how the middle eastern music and its percussions in particular can fade seamlessly into techno metal. Respect to other Senmuth's there's a good improvement in the transitions. They are studied and things don't happen suddenly anymore. It was one of the defects on some of the previous albums: sudden transitions, pauses and meaningless changes of pitch. On this album everything flows from the middle-eastern melodies to the darkest metal. Track 4 is probably the best example.

In general the transition is from ethnic to metal, but sometimes is the opposite. On Track 7 there's a distorted guitar which supports introduces an ethnic piece. A kind of fusion that's not unusual for Senmuth but that makes him unique, specially in this album that's the first after a long series to be more metal than ethnic oriented.

An excellent addition for open-minded listeners, good for metallers, maybe a bit challenging for the others.