FINSTERNIS

Dirty trash can music. Metallic coldness in dark French alleys. Music that makes you fear the dark and what it hides of creatures and mad hatters. This is the album you put on, when you have run out of horror stories to read in front of children. This will scare the living daylights out of them, and maybe land you a day in court as well.

Aluk Todolo are some French dark riders who came into these experimental waters by way of ship from the black metal scene. Whilst leaving a lot of things behind - such as the high pitched screaming vampire vocals, choruses and..... yeah well structures, there is still a good deal of stark black metal mentality about these guys. First of all, the production is raw like an unpeeled potato. Finsternis actually sounds like it was recorded inside a skip - or perhaps on the lower deck of a container-ship. Like I said trash can music.

The music itself trots along like a gothic Frankenstein. It's clumsy, slow as an Alzheimers patient on ice skates, ill-mannered, shrill, reverberating and uncouth - yet somehow this distinguishably bad taste in sonic behaviour manages to come across as something listenable. Hell, I'll even go as far as to say, that this actually is a rather good album. Sure it sounds like music from an Uzbek prison, made by convicts on bad acid with but a few rusty chains and an old broken microphone at their disposal, but it still does what it's supposed to: It frightens you, whilst stirring up bleak and chess-coloured images of what nightmarish brutal and heavy rhythmic noise just may look like.

Finsternis is made up of four "contacts" and one "totality" - whatever that means, but I guess we're dealing with some kind of concept album. The actual word Finsternis means darkness, and to tell you the truth, that is a pretty damn accurate description of the music within. Imagine being led through a couple of old and squeaky houses by a man with cold cold hands - he's breathing heavily, and he wears a lot of heavy jewellery - cling clanging his way through these black rooms with his hands around your waste - he occasionally steps on saws and other such tools that give off these chaotic noises. That's the general feel of this record. It's disturbing and scary like a David Lynch movie, and whilst you are aware of certain give-away horror moments - like the unmelodious guitar wails that sound like robotic cats being slaughtered - you are still on the fence about what kind of emotions to feel. The whole thing feels strangely absurd and disconnected, but it always has you by the throat with those cold hands. It's like being frightened of a shoe because of its placement. Quite bizarre.

If you are on the look out for what strange and terrorizing new musical frontier is being tortured and overstepped at the moment, then I urge you to give these guys a listen. This is not for the faint of heart, but as I said in the beginning of my ramblings: it will sure as hell scare away the snotty kid down the block who's into gangsta rap and likes to throw stones at heavy set people with glasses.

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