2003-01-11
Lunatic Gods have chosen their fourth release to deal with the rooted wilderness of the human natural, and his essential inclination towards implementing these inert attributes of his, in spite of the current nowadays resisting forces, fronted by Judeo-christianity’s monotheistic values . Most of the songs on the album are gathered under the title “Circles of Blindness”, when the second part of the album, “Wilderness”, contains no more than the title-track, confined by two short instrumental, biblically titled “Bemidabar” (“In the desert).
Lyrically, the first part of the album present the impossible condition of Man, whose natural animal instincts are being traditionaly leashed and manipulated. It expresses its hateful approach to Jesus, and his gratification of self-degradation and humiliation, while on the second part, the band admits (though quite regretfully) Man’s inevitable duty of obeyance to his militaristic impulses, of utter submittion to the spirit of Wilderness. So far, we are witnessing quite a Nietschean manifesto. According to the CD’s booklet, the band is also similar to the supreme philosopher in its controversial imagery. It is loaded with surely militaristic and violent, possibly National Socialistic visual presentation. Now, the band by no means distinctively supports facism. However, the adjoinment of the lyrics, concept and photos, does raise one’s eyebrow (For the record, in later interviews the band claimed to represent anti-war approaches).
Musically, it seems that the band has made a tremendous effort in order to create a unique and original album, which defies any standard genre labelizing, yet still maintaining a conceptual, musical common denomenator by embeding each of the songs with global, innovative, self-stated recurring motives.
Indeed, Lunatic God’s had the best intentions to complete their mission succesfuly and deliver an exceptional, unified concept album. However, the fulfilment of their goal turns out to be quite partial.
The band had chosen to characterize most of their pieces with a Wild sound, symbolized by parts of freely played, resonant acoustic / classical guitar, and very notably loosened, barbarian-like (and very accurate and tight, I must say) drumming. This, they have done very well. The quiet guitar parts are rather charming and binding, while the excellent, creative drumming consists the best aspect of the album. Unfortunatly, when reaching the Metal parts, the matter is a bit complicated:
It seems to me that while sacredly (and surely justifiedly) trying to avoid the banality of a certain style and produce their own characterizing sound, Lunatic Gods heroicly strove to avoid any consistency on the album (besides the aforementioned elements). They have gone a little too far: the album often sounds like a random blend of genres: some songs are Brutal Death Metal, other are Norse-folky-like epic Metal, one of the tracks sounds like a grungy interperataion of Amorphis, other like a commercial Thrash/Death/Clean Vocals tune. Here, the spinal common motives are supposed to cover the musical gaps between the different pieces. It just doesn’t work well enough: the band has created too wide craters to bridge and reconcile. Indeed, musically, some great parts are apparent. Leaving aside some conceptually-disjointed (right, just like the whole album) or plain mediocre bits, the band proves highly impressive compositional skills (near more standard playing abilities). As for creating a complete, unified album, a mandatory requiremet for true greatness, the band failed.
Recommended, only for those who may do with disconnected, separated though at times palatable and interesting ideas.
Tom Orgad
