Sometimes I'm close to selling my left testicle to hear something, if nothing totally unique of course, but different in metal music circles. There are so many bands and releases coming out all the time, that there must be something a bit distinct, right? Yes. This time around it was Polish band Iblis, who came to save me from losing my useless cumball, thank you. However, this isn't the first release from them, but this quartet returning with a debut album after two demos ('Follow Their Steps' from 2004 and 2008's 'Nuklear Rock 'n' Roll').

Iblis do not stick with typical formulas for very long. 'White Claudia' starts going-ons with Norwegian style black metal, before entering hyper-space warp-drive à la Hawkwind, and quite a nutty atmosphere due to "mental" vocals (more about these later). Then it's back to metal realm with some awesome melody-work and slide guitar playing. A fine piece of not-too-avant-garde-ish metal is what I hear. '12 Sycamores' is practically funk meeting thrash metal. Starting with intense blasting, it's soon time for a mellow hand clapping part, which made me think of Cathedral. Later on, the mathcore really gains some space in the songs. The compositions get more and more bland towards the ending, as the band do not throw in any real surprises anymore. By the way, even though the band's name is Islam for "The Devil", there are no Mid-Eastern influences in their music.

Like the album's title and psychedelic cover art express, this album is about madness (I haven't read any lyrics, but I just have this very strong gut feeling about it). Varying nutcase voices are of what the vocals are made of, usually highly reverbed. A lot of it happens in quite narrative vein. The mental atmosphere is way too sterile. The guitar playing consists of mathcore style discordant stuff, and various metal styles. Sadly, in my opinion, it sticks mostly to the style mentioned first. The bass too is very varying. The most apparent style is funk, or then for example extreme metal bass can be performed in funk way. Anyways, I can only think of one, at least a bit, similar band and it's One Step Beyond from Australia. The bass is maybe mixed the most high volume-wise, and might eat off some of the guitar's power. Or then it's that discordant mathcore playing, for which I would put my bet on. In all, the clean production job. Oh, the drums... They are good, offering loads of different stuff for sure.

I wouldn't sell either of my testicles for 'Menthell'. But maybe a bag-hair or three. But I thank the band for sounding at least a bit different. The album starts finely with 'White Claudia', but I really cannot get into rest of the material. This is close to being more than an average trip to the brain, but feels too fake, like the band didn't take their looney image to the hilt, or then they simply weren't able or skilled to do so. Maybe next time, after a few truly fucked up magic mushroom trips.

Rating: 6- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
10/17/2012 19:15