01	Methods Of Survival						07:18
	02	Flesh City						05:54
	03	Heartquake						04:32
	04	Burning Bridges						06:34
	05	This Vigil						06:32
	06	Tentacles						05:51
	07	Secondhand Traumas						06:15
	08	Pre-Sense						08:06

(c) & (p) 2003 Code666
(p) 2004 CD-Maximum

Atrox


by Ed Rivadavia
Norwegian extreme metal outfit Atrox was originally founded in 1988 under the very popular, and therefore unusable, name of Suffocation (which they soon discarded), but their first album, Mesmerized would only surface nearly a decade later, in 1997. By then, the band's initial predilection for straightforward death metal had given way to a highly unconventional form of progressive death fusing elements of metal with opera, jazz, ambient music, space rock, and even electronica. Led by singer/keyboardist Monika Edvardsen (sister of Ann-Mari Edvardsen, of The Third and the Mortal, to whom Atrox are often compared) and guitarist/vocalist Eivind Fjoseide the group has employed an ever-shifting cast of supporting musicians along their peculiarly idiosyncratic trajectory. Following such increasingly quirky, even baffling, efforts such as 2000's Contentum and 2002's Terrestrials, Atrox's adventurous spirit and personnel-swapping ways remain unchanged come their fourth album (and first for new label Code666), 2003's Orgasm, which also featured guitarist/bassist Rune Sorgard and drummer Tor-Arne Helgesen.



Atrox - Orgasm
2003

01. Burning Bridges
02. Methods Of Survival
03. Flesh City
04. This Vigil
05. Heartquake
06. Second Hand Traumas
07. Pre-fense
08. Tentacle


Review by Sephiroth

Well, well? what an album we have here!
Faithful to its tradition of innovation and avanguardism, Code666 publish the 4th
album of this Norwegian band that begun in 1988 by playing a death-doom kind of metal, and that, through a long journey of evolution (1 EP, 4 full length albums and a line-up completely changed) presents now itself with the problematic label of Progressive Skizo Metal.
What is that? Well, the recipe for the Atrox sound could be that: 250gr of Meshuggah, 200gr of The Gathering, 25gr of atmospheric electronic synths; mix with a teaspoon of jazz arrangements and rithmics. At the end, add fantasy and madness as much as you want.

Apart from those shitty tentatives of mine to be funny, I believe that the music proposed by Atrox is one of the most original and innovative crossover between different metal styles that I?ve ever heard. If possible a new (sub)genre in itself.

Since you find female vocals you could say that it?s gothic metal, but I have to say that this is not.
You can hear a track beginning with a heavy stopped rhythmic guitar riff in typical thrash/Meshuggah style, perfectly realized with a syncopated timing, and you could expect to hear a growling vocal, but?no, the riff stops and a jazz bass arrangement introduces us the voice of the talented singer Monika, that performs weird, variegated vocal lines, over the slow passages as well over the heaviest parts.
Forget of her Norwegian colleague like Liv Kristine of Vibeke Stene and their operatic heavenly voices, Monika?s voice is definitely more jazz oriented, but not less beautiful. Her tone is more like Anneke Van Giersbergen just to make an example, but surely uses her voice in a more varied, played way, a mad journey up and down through the octaves.
Just a few times, in some songs, you can hear a male vocalist that duets with Monika, but it?s perhaps useless since her voice doesn?t really needs of any support.

We almost have no solo guitar at all, I find that in this album the bass guitar is important and audible as much as the rhythmic guitar: now used for a jazz flavored riff now synchronized with the guitar for a heavy thrash riff, it always works very well, giving a "full" sound to the whole album.

This alternation of ?thrashy?, heavily deconstructed parts with slow ?jazzy? ones, in which the song is totally based on the voice of Monika or on an elaborated bass riffing, makes this album not immediately ?easylistening? (try to hear the second part of the last track), but if you listen it more and more you?ll begin to fuckin? like that style! The timing of the rhythmic section is something simply great, a time is never repeated too long and it?s always of a damned complexity, sometimes almost difficult to follow.

A sound that?s not too soft, to appeal those who likes an heavy riffing, but enough to have atmospheric and ethereal moments that put in an unexpected change.
Something of really new, definitely virtuously played and with a vein of madness that makes the result really intriguing, 50 minutes of album, but you?ll hardly feel bored to listen it all.

A positive notation deserves the artwork, (in a 6-panel digipack for the final version) with a very good painting realized by? Moinka Edvardsen, the singer (!)
Well done Atrox. That?s one of the most original and interesting ?female vocal? metal album I?ve ever heard. Go on with the evolution.




Rating: 9 | Write a comment