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AUTOKRATOR
Autokrator

Iron Bonehead Productions (2015)
Rating: 8.5/10

With an opening track which sounds something akin to being dragged into a meat-grinder, French outfit Autokrator instils a feeling of utmost dread from the off. Having recently been petrified by the grizzled cacophony of Morbid Evils’ In Hate With The Burning World, I’m now pleased to offer up another bunch of unhinged souls when it comes to droning deathgasms.

As debut albums go, Autokrator’s is one that is sure to start earthquakes and all manner of other earthly upheavals, such is its potency and mind-numbing ability. This is crushing metal which is part industrial mayhem, part death metal annihilation and another segment from beyond the realm of extremity.

I’m sure some elitists will try to categorise this ungodly racket but fail miserably, opening track ‘Act I – The Tenth Persecution’ giving the listener no clue as to what other horrors are to come or what influences are behind such a barrage. All I can say is that the track rumbles like a rusty generator about to explode but which never does, and yet from within its corroded confines we get an ethereal voice barking ominously while all around it just pummels.

I thought that maybe the first track was a mere introduction and what would follow would surely differ, but no. Instead, our ears are mashed by the belligerent, bellowing, billowing horror that is ‘Act 2 – Exsuperator’; another grimy, entangled rattling mess born from the rusty bowels of Hell. It’s not death metal, it’s not doom metal, it’s not drone. It just exists as whatever it is, the brainchild of five guys apparently who clearly have spent too much time working alongside furnaces, incinerators and other industrial machines. So maybe it’s fair to call this some sort of industrialised cacophony, because it’s a relentless mish-mash of hypnotic yet hammering tirades that rarely drift from the path chosen. Imagine being force fed on burning flames, and that’s about the closest you’ll get to the terrors conjured up by this demented quintet.

I’d still throw this alongside Morbid Evils for slightly similar pounding, but there’s not many words out there in dictionary land to describe something so barbaric, so arrogant and so crushing. It literally does sound like a myriad of deep, churning machines all grinding at the same time; iron teeth gnashing, and occasionally those rusty chasms for mouths belching out intoxicating fumes and miasmal voices.

‘Act 3 – The Filthy Pig Of Rome’ is an intense grinding migraine channelled via more turning cogs but well, well, well; the combo decides to throw in some dissonant sample – not that it enables the listener relief from the intensity. Indeed, by track four, ‘Act 4 – Autokrator’, no-one really cares about song titles; the artists responsible for this sorry mess just intent on mashing brains, bursting eyeballs, cracking bones, removing innards and coating the whole fuzzened mess with a vile, metallic rust that burns through.

It’s a horrible sound – only broken up by the title track which is a mere militant narration – but then we’re back in the cement mixer via the absolutely horrifying pulverisation known as ‘Act 5 – Qualis Artifex Pereo’, where the drum sounds like a blacksmith thumping away at his latest scolded creation while the rest of the lunatic asylum bangs radiators with lead pipes and turns clogged up cogs to manifest a harsh, relentless crunching.

Autokrator should have supplied the listener with a packet of paracetamol because this is one rough ride, and it doesn’t get any easier with the last trio of cuts. ‘Act 6 – Sit Divus, Modo Non Vivus’ assembles every orc beneath Mordor and has them rattle every chain they’ve crafted while some cavernous, booming voice – which doesn’t seem in any way human – snorts orders in its own evil vacuum. ‘Act 7 – Imperial Whore’ isn’t very nice either, continuing the same malevolent clanking in drone-like stages before the final outburst, ‘Act 8 – Optimus Princeps’, offers some release, but only by being a distant bellowing as if some hidden gargantuan force has been summoned from the depths of the earth.

The whole thing is a despicably noisy affair and I’d rather never hear something so terrifying ever again, but boy am I glad I got the opportunity this time, because Autokrator is one vast chasm of gnarly booming sure to swallow all in its destructive path.

Neil Arnold

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