This Is Happening Right Now

I have a few days off and I've been avoiding sunlight. The above album has received strangely little attention as far as I can see, besides a blurb in Decibel. Sometimes, I read Decibel. Well...

This is The Konsortium. All of the members are masked and they go by numbers, but unlike Slipknot, listening to them wont permanently damage your metal cred........or your credibility in general. The only known member is Teloch, who's done live stints in Gorgoroth, Mayhem, and 1349. While the project of this Norwegian scene veteran has a lot of similar trappings to the aforementioned groups, this may be closer to later-Enslaved, but less meandering and annoying (but hey! You may like newer Enslaved and maybe I'm totally missing the point on this matter).

The Konsortium, though...



...right, the Konsortium, on the one hand is both, at times, blisteringly harsh and bottom-heavy (not unlike Gorgoroth or 1349) while also managing to seamlessly drift into weirdo progressive moments and integrate all kinds of vocal styles, harsh and clean, which is damn impressive. It's often the weird proggy moments that have the most sticking power when I listen to this band.

Often times, "progressive" bands fall into what I refer to in my mind as "jigsaw song syndrome," where disparate pieces or styles of music are haphazardly thrown the fuck into each other for the sake of mixing things up. I don't like it. As an example, while I have a cozy, warm place in my heart for Between the Buried and Me*, who were a crucial crossover band that led me to listen to more extreme metal back in high school, on Colors, which is an album I'd still ultimately recommend, there are a lot of moments where disparate song pieces are jarringly matched together, such as a (I wish I was joking) country-style porch jam in the middle of a triumphant song bridge. Fuck.

None of that shit, here. I encourage you to konsort.


Weirdo Prog Shit


-W.F.



*Okay, speaking of: I don't know what kind of self-delusion the admins at the Metal Archives have to muster up to to say "Nah, that band isn't as "metal" as S.O.D. or the Cro-Mags" Yeah fuckin' right.