Verset Zero - Consilium

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  • Verset Zero makes black metal techno music with shrieking vocals, heavy distortion and all the sacrilegious melodrama that comes with it. His debut album, for the Spanish label Subsist, was an industrial dance floor record that, thanks to playful machine sounds and occult atmospherics, encouraged deeper listening. It was more mystical than menacing, with tracks that unfurled in grey mists. Verset Zero makes harsh noise and leaden beats with equal aplomb. (Check out the caustic Sacrificium, his recent cassette for AMOK Tapes, which is full of dense, claustrophobic soundscapes that grind and drone.) Consilium is his second record for Tripalium Corp, a group of labels focused on acid, rave and experimental techno. It comes with remixes from three purveyors of dark and cantankerous dance music. The opener, "Lux," harks back to the seductive magic of Verset Zero's album. In very metal fashion, it swoops in with strings and resonant chimes before grumbling bass hits crank things into gear. It evolves into an arc of strangled melody and a shunted beat. Blush Response's version hits hard from the off. "Grex Perditus" is the most metal track of the lot, featuring the burning howls of Lady Mary of The Infinite Spiral. Violet Poison reworks the original into a tetchy EBM workout. The metal references are more ambiguous elsewhere. Is "Primitas" Verset Zero's machine version of a squealing guitar solo? Huren's rework of "Suplicium" is the EP's most oppressive tune, a pressurised barrel of rage on the brink of a deadly detonation that never happens. If you like the idea of Black Sabbath and Slayer mangled with punishing techno and searing power electronics, then Verset Zero is for you.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Lux A2 Grex Perditus feat. Lady Mary Of The Infinite Spiral A3 Suplicium B1 Lux (Blush Response Remix) B2 Grex Perditus (Violet Poison Remix) B3 Suplicium (Huren Remix) Digital: Primitas Digital: Quaerer Digital: Turbatus
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