Full – length album (Selfmadegod Records, May 28th 2013)
Line – up (2000): Lukasz Myszkowski – vocals;
Sebastian Rokicki – guitars;
Michal Zawadzki – bass;
Pawel Jaroszewicz – drums.
Location: Warsaw (Poland
Better song of the album:
“Prophecy”.
Better feature of the band:
Its incredible violence combined with a great imagination.
Cover artwork: Lukasz Myszkowski
As I anticipated into the review of “It Rains, It Pours” of Dormant Ordeal, today I talk about the sixth studio album of the Antigama, but I must admit I never listened them before these last days. “Meteor” has surprised me, because it is a very fanciful and even visionary album during its 29 minutes circa of length per 11 tracks. These ones, it’s an important thing to say, are based prevalently on a ultra – sonic violence that is so precise to surprise the listener every time.
This quartet of unbridled madmen plays a dynamic death/grind full of blast – beats and characterized by a dissonant and noisy riffing that hates the melodies (and the solos, that are completely absent here). But the death/grind of the Antigama leaves some places to HC/Crust moments, allowing to the music to be more intense and sanguinary, while there are some disturbing slowdowns here and there in the album, like in “Prophecy”. But this sonic assault has played through remarkable technical skills, so it’s so more complex than the first impressions, also because the songs’ structure often respect, at least initially in some songs, an elementary 1 – 2 scheme destined to be broken during a track (except “The Signal”, that is the more classical song as regards the structure). Instead, the vocal sector is characterized by growling screams complete with double vocals and (rare) clean vocals, also in a spoken way.
The production of “Meteor” is very powerful but “true” at the same time, also if Antigama plays often with the effects, mostly on the vocals. Besides this, all the instruments are incredibly audible, despite the sonic holocaust.
But I realized that there are some great differences between the first and the second part of the album. The first one is very furious while the other half is characterized by more visionary songs, all the more so because you could have the impression to listen another band in some songs, like in the industrial “Untruth” (the longer track of “Meteor”, since its almost 5 minutes of length). But, before “Untruth”, there are:
- “Stargate” is a semi – instrumental song and it is divided between sudden blast – beats restarts and as many sudden breaks, complete with cosmic effects and a answering service (!), that is a female voice that takes again a bit the “There is a message for you” of the 2nd song, “The Key”;
- and “Turbulence” is a real instrumental track and characterized by a kind of “cosmic” drum’n’bass exploding in the next moments through a more groove metal tempo complete with a keyboard solo!
In a certain way, I can say that the second part of the album is introduced by the 5th song, “Fed by the Feeling”, that is based exclusively on the mid and also groovy tempos, not forgetting its thrashing riffs. In brief, the Antigama have an excellent imagination and capacity to create some good songs, as you see.
The listening of the album ends with a “goodbye” that is really terrifying in its simplicity. The absurd thing of “Meteor” is that its better song should be the semi - Meshugghian “Untruth” but it is so strange and less representative of the Antigama’s musicality to prefer “Prophecy”. Besides this, the second part of the album could be planned in a better way, so to put a strange track into the first half and another one of this kind at the centre ‘cause so there was a better balance between the two parts, don’t you think? But, these are little details since “Meteor” is always a Mr. album, violent and “intellectual” as few bands know to do.
Vote: 84
Flavio “Claustrofobia” Adducci
Tracklist:
1 – Collapse/ 2 – The Key/ 3 – Prophecy/ 4 – Meteor/ 5 – Fed by the Feeling/ 6 – Crystal Tune/ 7 – Stargate/ 8 – The Signal/ 9 – Turbulence/ 10 – Perfect Silence/ 11 - Untruth
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