Berzerker
Dissumulate
Earache
Everything I said in that Gilla Bruja review, all the good excited things, go for Berzerker twenty times over. How have I missed out on these guys for so long? They’re like one of my fucking dream bands. Berzerker found out where Godflesh buried the violated corpse of industrial music, dug it up with their bare hands and proceeded to parade it through the streets, all while savagely beating the decaying form with shovels, axes, and brass knuckles. Beyond audio violence and almost into some weird level of hyper-physicality, Fight Club meets Return of the Living Dead and Predator. Motherfucker, that’s some mojo.
Dissumulate is an unending series of hyper-quick body blows and groin shots. Berzerker takes the essential formulas of death metal and grindcore, multiplies them to an exponential degree, and encases the frothing, rabid creation in layers of printed circuitry. Techno-organic, a malignant virus. It’s metal music, but not metal as we know it right now. The best way to put Berzerker in historical perspective is to imagine going back in time and playing a Blue Oyster Cult fan some Slayer and trying to explain to them that this is what metal is going to sound like twenty years in the future. Cue confusion, eyes rolling into the back of one’s head, and perhaps even some angry incomprehension. NOW imagine going up to a Slayer fan today and playing them Berzerker – they won’t understand it right yet. They might even hate it. But they can’t goddamn well deny that this is what the future of metal holds. Or they’d be total fucking liars.
Berzerker is steroided, pill-popping, synapse-frying metal cannibalism. Everything is taken to an almost surreal degree of confrontation and aural discomfort. The distorted vocals sound even more pained and inhuman. The guitars are sharper, faster, and more precise. The songs are quicker. And, the coup de grace, the fucking drums. My god. This isn’t drumming – it’s precision hyperspace bludgeoning. Drum machine augmented of course, but Jesus Christ, these sure ain’t beats – they sound like M-16s squeezing off clip after motherfucking clip. Jackhammers, something. White noise at the speed of light. The first time you hear that drum machine really kick in – you’re gonna… I can’t be responsible for what you’re gonna do. Imagine Atari Teenage Riot’s drum machine melting down in a spectacular fashion. Hmm?
Carcass’s high watermark “Corporeal Jigsore Quandary” is excavated like a treasured time capsule and then reanimated through alien technology into a relentless steel murder machine. Dissimulate is by no means an easy experience, it’s taxing on the listener, frustrating, maddening. But what’s that line about being dragged kicking and screaming into the future? I just didn’t figure I’d be dragged brutally by the hair…
Earache Records: http://www.earache.com
