Verberis - "Vexamen" (Iron Bonehead Productions, 2016)

Band: Verberis
Title: Vexamen
Genre: Black/Death metal
Year: 2016
Time: 59 min
Rating: 83/100












You can read my review about the "Vastitas" EP through the following link:

http://www.heavymetalwebzine.it/2014/07/07/verberis-vastitas-2014/

Still I remember when I listened “Vastitas”, the 2014 EP of Verberis, a New Zealand very interesting band with completely unknown identities, like it’s the norm for many today extreme metal bands. Well, now Verberis are back with a new production titled “Vexamen” (Iron Bonehead Productions, 21st October 2016) for which they have preferred to unveil their faces for their very first promo pics, also if keeping substantially secret their own real identities to the mere mortals. So, expect an album able to go beyond the premises of “Vastitas” for a musicality now more unpredictable and darker than before.

“Vexamen” (Latin for “derangement” or “quake”) is a literally monumental album lasting even 59 minutes per 10 tracks. It’s incredible that each song is longer than the previous one, at least from the furious and dissonant half-instrumental “Thanatosia” (a kind of intro liable to open the album) to the abyssic 9 minutes of “The Gaping Hollow of Divinity”.

Throughout this interminable time, you’ll find a majestic death metal strongly influenced by black metal but with some doses of mega-blasting thrash metal plus some extravagant solutions. So, the various tracks combines perfectly unpredictability and complexity with a bunch of ultra-violence very close to the bestial black/death metal of Blasphemy and the likes, also if the doom metal tempos aren’t so few while now there are even military stroke rolls likely to be war metal (always during the last minutes of very long numbers like “Voidwards”). All this creates a very personal and coherent sound characterized also by bestial vocals supported by a freezing echo, fortunately less chaotic and confusing than the one of “Vastitas”.

Naturally, the tracklist is various. Yet said about the short “Thanatosia”, there are, for example, the two re-recorded songs from “Vastitas”, that are “The Primordial Rift” and the totally hysterical “Fangs of Pazuzu”. You’ll find also the dark and paranoid only piano intermezzo of “Vereri”, able to introduce the conclusive “Voidwards”, an 11 minutes nightmare.

Speaking about the longer songs, Verberis, in my opinion, do their best just into them to unleash completely their own and experimental fantasies, especially during the triptych comprised of “Charnel Vibrations”/”Flagellum de Igne”/”The Gaping Hollow of Divinity”, all real tour de force-tracks from 7 to 9 minutes.

Specifically, “Charnel Vibrations”, at a certain point, surprise everyone with a slow part full of incredibly melodic arpeggios but counting also a nice guitar solo before exploding in a tempestuous wave of absolute fury where there is an excellent interaction between the guitars. Instead, “Flagellum de Igne”, among punkish thrash metal outbursts suitable for the wilder headbanging, crush the listeners for its long doom part focused even on artificial harmonics, surely a rarity into an (ultra-)-extreme metal production! Finally, the following “The Gaping Hollow of Divinity” has another slow part but this time it’s made of strange melodies with the addition of a  particular guitar solo, and all this before the song exploding with majestic and very furious blast-beats made more intense thanks to a sudden break followed by a devastating restart.

In other words, now Verberis have added a lot of new skills to their music compared to “Vastitas”: for example, there are more black metal elements as well as (occasional) guitar solos (in fact, “Vastitas” was completely lack of these ones), and there is also a stronger experimental edge which allows the composition of very complex, majestic and unusual songs like the 3 aforementioned ones. Moreover, there is a curious feature in “Vexamen”: some tracks ends with a clean guitar outro. In conclusion, I hope that the band will continue to break new grounds for the future productions taking, as main points of reference, interminable and inventive numbers like “Flagellum de Igne”.

Tracklist:

1 – Thanatosia
2 – The Primordial Rift
3 – Vexamen
4 – Protogonos
5 – Charnel Vibrations
6 – Flagellum de Igne
7 – The Gaping Hollow of Divinity
8 – Fangs of Pazuzu
9 – Vereri
10 – Voidwards

Line-up:

Unknown

BandCamp: https://verberis.bandcamp.com/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/verberis/
Iron Bonehead Productions: http://www.ironbonehead.de/