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NORSE
Pest EP

Self-released (2014)
Rating: 8/10

Australia seems to be producing some fine extreme metal bands of late and Norse is another unholy bunch, having just released their new EP Pest. Now, I’ve heard some truly grim death-laden black metal over the years, but this new six-track EP is one I’m having difficulty prising from the headphones.

The press releases for this opus states that “the band is not interested in genres or trends”, and with just one spin of this racket you’ll understand why.

It seems as if these rather unique maniacs have found a niche with their sound. While leaning toward the black metal extremity, there is a real unnerving discordance about this EP; one moment the combo seem happy to ramble away with speeding grey guitars and spiky percussion, but the next there is a real feeling of cold, rugged terrain and nastiness.

This is fuelled by some truly inhospitable guitar work that at times has more in common with death metallers Autopsy, mixed with an ashen doom metal raggedness. The doomier passages are extremely isolating as they rumble with ominous intent by way of guitars which plod through the debris, but above all it’s the horrifying vocals which propel Norse to greater heights. The snarls and maniacal barks are so convincing that you’d begin to think that they were literally at your keyhole. Couple this feeling of dread with a number of war-torn atmospherics and apocalyptic bursts of speed, and you’ve got a real rust bucket on your hands.

‘Encoded Weakness’ kicks things off, and it’s not nice at all. The jarring guitar sound and those furious, arrogant howls of ADR are so uncompromising and crude, but the jolting, yet accessible greyness of it all somehow also hints at industrial metal in its dissonance.

Black billowing smoke of conflict smothers this platter. Norse are masters of their trade; as rampant as a corroded bulldozer, they clank, clatter, hurtle, rattle and unevenly march across the battlefields without a care in the world. This is some really arrogant metal of varying tempo and temperature – they have clearly progressed (or should that be regressed?) from their 2010 debut Hellstorm. This time, the rhythms are so juddering and injected with poison.

‘Disarmed, Toothless, Weak’ is a leviathan of a track that leaks an oily fluid as the guitars and drums unite in some foetid punkoid frenzy of primitive meandering. ‘Pest’ is a simmering snarl of sinister vocal pukes and distant guitars before the machine gun percussion enters the fold, and my favourite slab of raw, technical brilliance is the looming shadow that is ‘True Insignificance’.

Like the other tracks on offer, ‘True Insignificance’ just exists as a lump of twisted, uncontrollable machinery that vomits smoke, nuts and bolts in a manner that is much more than just bile-coated black metal. And as ‘Aimless’ oozes to its last breath amidst a carpet of bent nails, toxic liquid and shards of metal, I’m quite literally concerned about the bleakness of thought that stirs within the unstable craniums of these guys. Forget black metal; this is bleak metal.

Neil Arnold

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