Anti-Cosmic Pop Metal - "Reinkaos" Review (41%)
If you ever find yourself wondering why mainstream music produces so many professional and articulate sounding acts while black metal seems all too often copy-pasted together in what would appear to be a counterproductive race against coherence, worry no more: Dissection has invented a new form of radio-friendly "black metal" that competes with the big bands like Metallica and Satyricon you can hear on the radio.
Much of mainstream metal's heritage is pop music. Iron Maiden, Queensrÿche, Cannibal Corpse, Arch Enemy and even easy-listening "black metal" like Immortal follow the pop formula. It's only the truly audacious, the once in a lifetime masters of the genre, the Burzums, the Mayhems and the Phantoms that break out of the pop artistic prison.
What most underground black metal acts are not, is systematic, methodical and rigorous. Not in listening to their own material, not in analyzing it, not in following published research on effective songwriting and thus, not in consistency.
A professional band approaches music entirely different from an "amateur", much more like a science than what much of the "dudebro" metal demographic would imagine. Every part of every song must be deliberate, which requires organization and, to put it bluntly, hard work.
This rational and pragmatic view of music threatens hobbyist metalheads two ways. First, it points out that we could do better, with self-discipline. Second, it points out that the world isn't as simple as "all pop is crap" and "all underground is good". Pop is musically competent and in many ways surpasses the vast majority of what underground bands could ever produce.
Of course, I'm just playing devil's advocate here to make a point, but the point is valid.
Anti-Cosmic Pop Metal
Reinkaos manipulates human emotions with all of the subtlety of a Hollywood blockbuster. All aspects of this album are thoroughly professional. Nothing is left to chance. Every note is calculated to produce an effect, and combined together to make a greater whole. Production is also impeccable, creating a glossy space that resonates with reverbed guitars and avoids the crowding of distorted tracks, as is often the case with most underground black metal.
Every aspect that wants to be heard can be heard, and through the magic of ProTools, identical parts are literally identical. In itself, the production on Reinkaos makes you want to relish this release because it gives it a big radio pop gloss without truly emulsifying the album into worthless cock rock uniformity.
The music of Reinkaos is designed based on what has become highly popular for "mainstream metal" over the past two decades: MINO. Metal In Name Only.
Superficial aesthetics of black metal, an inner core of, well... rock.
If you can imagine Iron Maiden, Soilwork, Evanescence and Amon Amarth in a blender, you can see where Dissection get their influences for Reinkaos. It mixes the sweet dual lead guitar work of NWOBHM with the bouncing riffs and "carnival music" style of metalcore.
True, you will hear a Neraines influence in what is barely more than the echo of the echo of a remnant of long lost black metal sound. What once was. Otherwise, Reinkaos is pure pop rock.
Sonata Arctica influences the surging choruses and sparkly bright major key vocal melodies, In Flames the mallcorish breakdowns during the bridges, Soilwork the very stop/start groove based nature of the verse riffs, and you could detect later Queensrÿche's hybrid of indie rock, glam metal and power metal in its use of vocal hooks and interwoven rhythmic lines.
There are no ballads, per se... the ballad effect has been swept up in the "extreme metal effect", which is itself subsumed in the cock rock effect.
Dissection target the audience for guitar heavy rock bands like Papa Roach or Rev Theory with the appeal of melodic metal and the campiness of power metal - which has a lot in common with modern Christian rock in this respect, all the way down to the "theistic" and "anti-Cosmic" lyrical themes.
While Reinkaos may not satisfy the underground true black metal palate, its goal is not to appeal to that audience, but to the people listening to mainstream cock rock who are looking for something else. Something that's still cock rock, but a bit harder. Something that goes a bit further, a bit deeper down the prolapsed asshole of anti-Cosmic capitalism without ending up in a truly dark and disturbing place.
RIDE THE BLACK DRAGON!!!! MAHA KALMASUTRA!!!!! HAIL THE DARK MOTHER DIVINE AND THE BLACK FLAME THAT BURNS INSIDE!!!!!
Reinkaos score: 41/100.
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