What I do know, however, is that “Beacons,” an album available for free (with suggested donation) here, is excellent. My relationship with metal began in about sixth grade and ended around eighth grade, with occasional dalliances thereafter. I think what eventually turned me off to metal was the not the music, which tends to pack in as much drama and tension as possible (good!), but the ridiculous lyrics (not good!). Let’s face it; devils and blood and mayhem get old pretty quickly. In my mid-teens I found myself losing interest in the metal aesthetic as my tastes turned toward rootsier, folkier stuff on the one hand and abstract freak-edelic gonzo-osity on the other. I have reconnected with metal in recent years by listening to Norwegian black metal, which has the savage beauty I enjoyed in the first place without the distracting lyrics. Oh, there are lyrics, but I cannot begin to decipher what these satanic he-banshees are shrieking about, so it doesn’t bother me.
And that is why I was overjoyed to discover the wordless “Beacons.” As far as I can figure, the album is a musical depiction of a fighter pilot going down down down and what he does to stay alive after a rude landing. I won’t bore you with a song-by-song analysis, but believe me when I say that the tracking is brilliant. The album simply doesn’t work for me on shuffle. The narrative of the music is filled with peaks and valleys in all the right places, creating a coherent, seamless vision of a bleak scene for our doomed flyboy.
Another thing I want to point out is the interesting interplay between the melody and the rhythm. On some tracks such as “Here, wait a minute! Damn it!,” the complicated beat seems to be most intense when the melody is descending, while the melody is most prominent as the beat gets softer, then the whole thing repeats again. Of course, one repetition takes place all of about one second, but the effect is startlingly hypnotic. I found myself getting pulled in by the calculated audio arithmetic unfolding between my ears. Wait a minute… calculated?!? arithmetic?!? Eureka! Now I understand why it’s called mathcore! Satori!
Alright. Go listen to it. Be enlightened. Leave comments.
