...SIŁA I PIĘKNO MUZYKI TKWIĄ W JEJ RÓŻNORODNOŚCI


..::OPIS::..

Trudno dostępny drugi album experimental grind/deathmetalowej załogi z Czech!!!

Utrzymany jest ten sam styl muzyczny, tak charakterystyczny dla zespołu. Grindowa baza wciąż jest podstawą, ale wzbogacona jest o sporo technik HC, deathmetalowych pasaży i, co nie mniej ważne, elektroniki, która dodaje całości świeżości i pikanterii... i tak naprawdę, dzięki tym syntetycznym dźwiękom, CONTRASTIC to dla mnie oryginalnie brzmiący zespół z własnym obliczem i podejściem do kompozycji, co bardzo mi się podoba.

FA


Coming hot off the heels of fellow countrymen !T.O.O.H.!'s attempt at relevancy comes this most unexpected of releases: Contrastic's sophomore(!!!) effort, Mamun. Much like yet another fellow Czech extreme metal luminaries, Lykathea Aflame, Contrastic released a sole masterpiece 20 years ago and seemingly decided they had done enough. Unlike the aforementioned band, they didn't spend the next 15 years promising a grand return. Unlike the aforementioned band, they now present a grand return.

Imagine my dread when I saw the album announced. Most of my experiences with big-name-comebacks ("big-names" as understood in the context of niche extreme metal, in this case) throughout the freshly finished decade have amounted to little more than depressing Memento Mori(s), a front-row seat to the spectacle that is the decay of creativity and the ruining of legacies. I was absolutely ready for this trend to continue. After all, what else can I expect from a band that stood dormant for two entire decades, only burst into the scene again in pretty much the same way a brick burst through a window, carrying an ominous message on a piece of paper tied to it? This time around, however, it wasn't much of a brick bursting through a window. It was rather like bumping into an old friend with whom one had lost contact in a pub right in the middle of Happy Hour. Fuck knows I needed something like this to put a slightly less depressive cap to the decade.

Contrastic has, either by virtue of unadultered genius, by quietly and slowly developing ideas before commiting them to tape, or by paying close attention to what's been going on in the past ten years, shown that they can still write challenging and imaginative music. Surely they have not reinvented the wheel; what this album has to offer has been offered before by other bands, tellingly by bands that seem to have been influenced by the immediately idiosyncratic and easily recognised extreme experimental Czech scene of the early 2000s. With that in mind, what we have here seems to be a sort of Gorguts situation: The band has come back to offer us their say in these current times, to show that, while maybe not as revolutionary as they once were, they're at the very least at the same level as all those bands that came after, walking the now-trodden path they had left behind. That's a relief, to say the least, and I cannot realistically expect a better outcome for an album 20 years in the making.

Now, that said, you'd expect the music itself is quite different from that of their self-titled, and it very much is. There is a lot, and I mean a LOT, going on here. The band managed to condense a fuckoff amount of ideas and approaches in this tiny, ~25min. long album without ending up with an overbearing mismash of pointless eclecticism and tackiness. The music overall has a slightly industrial edge to it. Not "industrial" in the sense that most people think of, which roughly translates to "it has keyboards but it's not symphonic", but rather in the Dødheimsgard sense of electronic 'sounds' used to enhance a sense of inhumanity or otherwordliness as they see fit. There are samples, digitally distorted vocals, the works. And the works work. One thing that struck me is how I couldn't really point out to anything that felt out of place. If anything my only complaint is that the album is too short, but then again that might be a blessing in disguise, especially when it comes to both comebacks and deathgrind in general. Their first album, tellingly, was also below the half-hour mark.

Riffing and drumming, let's talk about that. Let's talk about how varied they are, how contemporary they sound. Some people still reel and gnash their teeth when exposed to the rather straightforward idea that time, well, passes. The Internet has made it easy for an entire generation (mine, sadly enough) to build their entire personality around the constant shock of learning that time moves forward, and that 2000 was 20 years ago. Yes, it's true: My generation's main contribution to the history of culture seems to be their complete inability to wrap their heads around basic arithmetic (that, and the glorification of a new kind of "oldness", which they insist starts at age 25). Anyway. the point is that, yes, 20 years is indeed a sizeable chunck of time, and, especially when it comes to popular culture, 2000 was a long time ago. It happens. That was the main reason why I was more than ready to discover an absolutely mediocre, lukewarm attempt at music that, while always fresh and ready for revisiting, would be rather ridiculous to present as a new product today. If there's any band out there releasing new albums comprised of new material that sounds pretty much exactly like, say, Bloodflowers-era The Cure, they'd be laughed off of the stage. However this continues to be perfectly acceptable in the world of metal, for some fuckdamned reason. The term "contemporary" no longer covers that decade, like it or not. And that's a lesson that Contrastic seems to have learned straight away, with no need of intermediate albums. I don't know what it is, since the lineup seems to be pretty much the same except the bass player (R.I.P.) and the musicians involved haven't really been active for over ten years.

Where did they learn to stay acceptably fresh? Where did they learn to alternate straightforward deathgrind with somewhat "post-metal"-ish flirtings that's been all the rage in the 2010s, with the start-stop rockish approaches and the juxtaposition of thick distortion and thin cleanliness? The melodiousness that doesn't compromise aggressivity? The tactful dynamics in tempo and timbre which allows the band to shine in somewhat un-metal ways? Whence cometh this occasional burst of dissonance? Have they been taking notes frome DsO and the Icelandic scene? Terribly unlikely, and yet here we are, a veteran arriving at the same conclusion as his disciples, through completely different means and through no cross-pollination (that I know of). Kind of makes me sad that these good folk have had nothing to say throughout the decade, because with an effort as strong and imaginative as this one coming after 20 years of silence, maybe exercising their musical abilities throughout the decade could have established them as a main driving force instead of joining the ranks of the numerous Comeback Kids of the 10s, which is always an ugly title to bear, regardless of how good the comeback is.

As it is, it's nothing short of miraculous that a band that released one legendary album two entire decades ago would release a second effort that is at the very least up to the challenge of a now thankfully concluded decade. They were never going to rediscover fire nor trailblaze their way into an entire new subgenre, but that doesn't matter anymore. That, I don't believe will be happening again. This sort of pleasant surprise is as good as it will ever get. I declare this album nothing short of a miracle. One that no other Czech band that has been scratching their arses for 20 years now will be able to pull off. You hearing me, Lykathea Aflame?

Avestriel



..::OBSADA::..

1. Na márách 03:08
2. Tarvas Maniacus 02:27
3. Mentální výtok 03:07
4. Tenkrát na severu 02:45
5. Košile 02:21
6. Oni 02:17
7. Služebně starší nacista 01:38
8. National razor 02:37
9. Homoheresy 04:07




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