With experience of Lebanese Civil War, radical religion/ideologies and whatnot, Death Tribe project by Anthony Kaoteon seems to have pretty damn credible motives to write tough music, huh?

Mr. Kaoteon now lives in the Netherlands, which is no surprise as his band Chaotaeon (nowadays Kaoteon) were arrested by Lebanese police during a concert and interrogated for days. Metal music is the biggest of Satanic threats over there, or at least one of them. On this album we hear Linus Klausenitzer (Obscura among others) on bass guitar and Dark Fortress drummer Mattias Landes, plus a mercenary gang of guest vocalists.

The music heard on 'Beyond Pain and Pleasure: A Desert Experiment' consists of more or less extreme metal styles, still sticking to angrier delivery. Starting with groove metal, a bit in vein of Soulfly (when they discovered being metal ain't wrong), disharmonic black metal vibe is soon introduced, and Mid-Eastern melodies in vein of Melechesh, too. Fretless jazzy bass guitar, then... So not surprisingly, there's also technical death metal bits abound, with some more chaotic structuring and speed. 'Death Blues'; yes, dirty rocker. At times vibe turns to weirder and ominous, a bit similar to Voivod with all the disharmonies abound (go and try 'Nuclear Hate' and hear it for yourself), or generally industrial metal-ish.

Yes, this album is a bit of a mess of various styles, which sometimes happen in a pair in a song. It's not as bad in "what to play" syndrome as Anthrax's 'Volume 8' (1998), for example, but its listener should be into more than one style. Most of the songs contain at least one hook, but nothing is worth classic status, because it's "heard it all before" category for a big part. However, there is distinctive vibe to the album. While the song structures vary from simplistic to more chaotic, it does not feel like it's about to fall on its face. There are guest vocalists for different musical styles, which is not a bad idea at all. Each guest sounds very much capable in their craft. For example death growls and shouting in earlier Entombed style work very well, indeed.

The album is pretty well done, productionwise. It has bass, but sometimes guitar tone or drums sound powerless of flat. All in all, 'Beyond Pain and Pleasure: A Desert Experiment' is a worthwhile piece of genre-jumping for those who can stand the thing. It grew to be more than just a mess of an album that it at first felt it was...

Rating: 6+ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
05/21/2019 17:02