RAMPANCY
The Sublime Conquest Of Nothing
WitchCult (2017)
Rating: 8/10
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Formerly known as Anti-Freeze, Rampancy is a one-man band out of London, Ontario in Canada. The Sublime Conquest Of Nothing is a cassette release limited to 100 copies, boasting 11 absolutely tumultuous affairs which provide an unrestrained amalgamation of industrialised, grinding, death black absurdity.
It’s a chap named Oculus Tod (aka Preston Lobzun) who is responsible for this absolute racket of a record. But far from being a straight-forward project, Oculus has constructed a barbaric and unrelenting maze of demented extreme noise. Indeed, it’s as if Mike Patton (Faith No More) has spat out Mr. Tod, who rewards us with a lo-fi, primitive bestial lump of billowing evil.
Of all the genres it taps into, it’s the extreme end of black metal that appears as the dominant force which drives this untamed excretion into the ears. Basically, if you like wild, raw, and mostly fast and sneering black metal, then you’ll dig this. However, there’s more going on behind those barbed wire fences and blistering routs of percussion. This is insane, atmospheric and hideous material.
Angry, sniping, mocking and seething, Rampancy goes for the throat immediately with the hellish, rancid slop of ‘Blood For Blood’ and ‘Failure In The Eyes Of Jehova’. Both are rank, sordid cuts of prime speed and rusty abandonment knitted together by the vile, fuzzed out sneers and those loose, raging riffs of witchery.
It’s not all just some whooshing blur, however. There are plenty of meatier, slower passages of spite which make their presence known in the likes of ‘Schadenfreude’ and the harsher climes of, say, ‘Choose Your Side’. But for the most part the album is about contempt which dribbles from those nasty, flailing riffs, as the percussion daubs onto the listener a hefty, squalid black thrash attack, while Oculus’ voice is a despicable, rasping froth which even laces the more formulaic gallops seem untoward and murky.
Thorny, wailing solos puncture the dismal atmosphere as another mid-paced atrocity such as ‘Thy Kingdom’ – a lengthier reworking of the track that first appeared on Anti-Freeze’s 2014 album Aftermath – builds the eerie suspense. Strangely, as the album progresses as do the levels of maturity, and suddenly the blind rushes of vicious power give way to classic, mid-90s black metal compositions – slow, yet icy black churns. But those seeking more wiry, pacey affairs, look no further than the clunking rattle of closer ‘A.F.D.T.D.’, although the album’s most monstrous and domineering track appears to be the wretched ‘Insurrectionary Extremist’ with its pungent slogging riffs and heavy, doom-laden drums.
The Sublime Conquest Of Nothing is one perilous trip to partake in; a festering quagmire of blackened, squelching pitfalls laced with thorny ridges and primitive plateaus. It’ll take a brave soul to attempt to pick the rusty bones out of this one, because Oculus Tod has conjured up a truly wicked-sounding platter of bustling, boiling black noise.
