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Misanthropian: A torture of your own design

11/10/10 || revenant

I’m in a shit mood today. I have had a fucking terrible week, and it would give me no end of pleasure to rip some crappy label send’s album apart. Only I can’t. It’s not that the words fail me. Oh no. It actually comes down to the fact that the label send I have is actually quite good.

Misanthropian eh? Never fucking heard of you. A question though – you do realize your moniker is NOT a real word, right? The word you were looking for, I have no doubt, is misanthropist or misanthrope, meaning someone who hates or mistrusts mankind. Interesting fact: my dictionary has a picture of Kampfar next to the word. True story.

Misanthropian are a brutal death metal band hailing from Sweden. Yeah, Sweden. Now I don’t need to tell you it’s going to be good. What is it with Sweden and consistently quality death metal? Seriously, I thought my bowels were consistent. 11.05am every morning and I’m dropping turds. My bowel movements are so consistent you can set your watch to them, and still Sweden’s death metal output puts my bowels to shame.

The thing I like most about these dictionary dodgers is the technicality and ever evolving nature of the music. You get blast beats overlaid with melodic guitar passages, then some heavy grooves and then some more blast beats. I tend to find that when I listen to brutal death metal that the constant barrage of blast beats can get boring after a while. This is not the case with Misanthropian. They pack a lot of riffs, melody and tempo shifts into each song, and do it seamlessly. It’s what every vagina should be: tight. If there was a death metal academy in Sweden (which I theorize there is, given the consistency mentioned above), these guys certainly graduated with high scores.

If I were to pick a weakness I would pick the vocals that are not quite there. For me, this type of music needs to vocals with such intense, frightening brutality that your testicles will flee back up into your body, leaving your scrotum as just a useless flap of skin. They need to be so powerful that once your testicles do drop back down and do what nature intended them to do, that your first born child will exit the womb a quivering wreck. I have given this album a few spins now and let me tell you something: these balls are going nowhere. The growls needed to be done with far more intent, and need to be a more dominant feature in the mix. If I were to give advice to the band, I’d tell them next time they go into the studio, needle this guy to snapping point, get him fucking pissed off before he unleashes on the microphone, because you will all benefit from it.

Overall, this is quite a noteworthy debut. I won’t go as far as declaring this band the bestest, most awesomest brootal mega ace dudes to appear on the scene this year, but it’s certainly one of the better brutal death metals albums to come out so far. Fan of said genre? Check them out. And sure, in hindsight maybe the moniker is a made up word by intention, these guys are artians after all.

7,5

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Supernova
Website: Misanthropian MySpace
Band
Daniel: vocals
John: guitars
Janek: guitars
Andreas: bass
Jaanus: drums

Tracklist
01. March To Dominate
02. This Ends Now
03. Into This Life
04. Begging And Lacerating
05. A Torture Of Your Own Design
06. Pure Self
07. Reproduced
08. Words Made Flesh
09. Sado-Consumism
10. Dead Silence

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