ABORYM

In the tradition of early '90s garage black metal demos, Aborym's 'Worshipping (sic) Black Souls' was Aborym's first recorded output. With only thirteen minutes of material here to work with, it's safe to say that this is something that won't find much appeal past the fans of the band. That being said, as black demos go, Aborym makes a decent first step. In tandem with the necessary black metal riffs and blastbeats, there are a handful of ambient keyboard passages here, and this is what incidentally makes the biggest impression on me. As campy as they are, the tinny organ hymns sound like they could be the soundtrack to one of the LeVeyan Satanic Church's cheesy rituals. 'Hermetic Brotherhood Of Luxor' starts the demo off on its best foot, with the aforementioned organs creeping along at a snail's pace. Sadly, the black metal elements of the demo do not stand out in any way, and this robs Aborym's demo from standing out. There is the usual fanfare of raspy vocal work and muffled guitars; the band is evidently influenced by the Norwegian scene.

'Worshipping Damned Souls' is not a winner, but- to be fair- it's not a total mess either.

The only thing that is mildly interesting is the opening bass line on Praise The Beast, other than, this is a muddled mess of bad black metal. I also notice that there are supposededly synths present, but if there are, I cannot here them.

Very, very poor album indeed.

This is Aborym's debut album and Attila Csihar is listed as a guest musician here. The music on this album is a mix of symphonic black metal aka most bands from the second wave of Norwegian black metal and a lot of other things. Those other things are samples of classical music, spoken words, electronica, house and other sound samples. This album is a disjointed affair with half industrial symphonic black metal and the rest is samples.

This creates an album which sounds like various ideas thrown into an album. The music is merely decent. The musicianship is good, but nothing more.

This album is for black metal fans only. Even they will find it hard to like this album.

2 stars bordering to 1 star

Aborym plays a unique style of industrial black metal. On this album you will hear atmospheric synthesizers, fast blast beats, wailing saxophone solos, and creepy sound effects. The more industrial-influenced parts don't appeal to me very much, but they are done in a high-quality fashion. Still, I much prefer the symphonic black metal sections. This is a 10-part "concept-ish" album, consisting of song titles that only consist of a roman numeral. There is definitely a conceptual feeling throughout Psychogrotesque. I won't mention any particular tracks since the entire album is really one big song, but I will mention that the album's opening really sets the overall mood perfectly. The atmospheric keyboards throughout this album really add an extra dimension to Aborym's sound. Check out the fourth track to understand why.

The production is great. It is much more polished than old-school black metal purists will enjoy, but I personally think it's great. It's atmospheric, yet extremely heavy at the right times.

Psychogrotesque isn't the type of album I'll put on frequently, but I've really enjoyed listening to the latest Aborym album during the last week. If you want unique extreme metal that will send chills down your spine every time you hear it, this is a highly recommendable release. Just be warned - this is not an album for the squeamish. 4 stars are well deserved for this high quality album. It'll only be a matter of time before I check out some more Aborym releases.

The lyrical content, which is about metal suffering, is obviously unpleasant. The guitars have a really sharp sound which, to use the title of an Annihilator track, burns like a buzzaw blade, which suits the darks atmosphere of the music very well. In addition to predominantly ultra-fast, blasting black metal parts, Aborym make use of ambient keyboards and creepy sound effects, which often pop out of the blue (such as the buzz of a fly, tortured screams representing a mental patient, drills and click representing instruments used the treatment of mental patients etc.). There are also sections with programmed drumbeats, many of which are akin to those used by Prodigy in their heyday and even some sections that sound like dark house/dance. In most cases, I think this works very well, but there are some instances, where the techno-influences come off as being a bit too forced perhaps.

There is also a progressive avant-garde feel to this release, as the band not only blends black metal and techno music, but also make use of instrumentation from various different genres, such as a saxophone - and those saxophone parts work brilliantly.

Overall, one has to respect "Psychogrotesque" as a piece of art which dares to explore unpleasant emotions. I think that the techno music elements may throw off more hard core black metal fans, but I think that more open-minded fans of darker less mainstream types of techno music might appreciate this album.

It's psycho, it's grotesque and its wonderfully unpleasant.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com and progfreak.com)