After 19 years Polish band Eternal Deformity are now releasing their fifth album. I haven’t heard the previous ones, but one thing is for sure. Pigeon-holing this style of music is not easy. I suppose avant-garde metal probably covers it. No two tracks are the same, but there is a common theatricality.
After the confident intro, which has the air of a dramatic film soundtrack, “Thy Kingdom Gone” seems to be a case of evil-infused melodic black metal. Rasping vocals mix with ominous drums in a recognisably Polish style. Predominantly dark and dangerous, there is space for clean vocals and a speedy and exciting rock solo. If, however “Thy Kingdom Gone” is black metal in its style, the core rhythm of the next track “Lifeless” is similar to Swedish MeloDeath with some Children of Bodom, a few growls and, to start, the cosmic complexity of Asgaard thrown in. As the album progresses, there are screams, sinister atmospheres, Riverside-like mellow passages and an overall Gothic ambiance. I suppose it doesn’t matter where I stand on any of this or what it’s leading to, but whilst it’s very musically competent, I’m not getting the drift. The Beauty of Chaos, indeed.
“The Beauty of the Ultimate End” takes us back to the black metal style of the earlier “Thy Kingdom Gone”. This pompous and keyboard laden piece of theatrical suspense and drama reminded me a lot of Devilish Impressions’s “Dracula’s Mechanized Universe” but what you don’t get in the middle of that is interjections of Soilwork-sounding clean vocal choruses. Very strange. The end is dramatic but I just found it confusing. I have no idea what the next track has to do with its title “The Sun”. That in itself isn’t so unusual but the strange mixture of instrumental anarchy, a bit of classical, manic piano playing, a bit of black metal and the distant-sounding Satariel-style clean vocal chorus, oh and the shaky vocals, made me start to wonder if it was me or they who was losing the plot. Melodic Death/Black is the framework for the final track “The Holy Decay” but it can never stay constant. We seem to travel briefly through a swamp, then we hear delicate, sweet vocals as if nothing untoward has happened and romance is in the air. Guitar virtuosity takes us back to the melodic metal. But inevitably things aren’t quite right, and this powerful musical offering takes us in all sorts of directions before reaching finality. It’s ingenious really. It’s certainly insane.
This disparate set of tracks and tracks within tracks for sure is representative of the chaos in the album’s title. On the one hand I tell myself that there must be less frustrating ways of doing it. On the other, “The Beauty of Chaos” has been growing on me and I have started to appreciate its anarchic qualities. If you’re ready to embrace disorder and chaos, it’s fine.
(6 / 10 Andrew Doherty)
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