Exactly one week ago we posted Andy Synn’s extravagant review of Kaiserschnitt, the extravagant new album by Germany’s Porta Nigra, which is being released today by Debemur Morti Productions. As of this moment, you can now download the album or purchase one of the beautiful physical copies — but perhaps most important, you now have a chance to listen to all of it before taking the plunge.
If you haven’t yet discovered the stream that just went live on Bandcamp, all you have to do is skip to the bottom of this post and there you will find it. And if you need any further encouragement to let it into your head, here are a few choice words from Andy’s review, with which I almost whole-heartedly agree:
Kaiserschnitt sees the band irradiating and mutating their sound even more, the songs contained within sounding like the bizarre, mutated product of some horrible military experiment designed to weaponise weirdness.
….
Dealing, conceptually, with the horror and history, the glitz and the glamour. and the morbid megalomania of the German empire of the early 1900s, there’s a malicious method to the madness underlying every song, and a seductive, strangely hypnotic vibe which permeates the album’s nine tracks of non-conformist musical malevolence.
….Perplexing, disturbing, and most assuredly more than a little strange around the edges, Kaiserschnitt offers up a compelling and unapologetic argument in support of the idea of art for art’s sake, delivering nine tracks of unique, uncompromising weirdness and wonder, a series of esoteric anthems for the lunatic fringe.
Kaiserschnitt is indeed a fascinating album. It’s raw meat for those listeners who hunger for metal that’s off all the beaten paths, yet still strikes enough familiar chords that it shouldn’t be a turn-off to fans who recoil at the words “avant garde”. And that’s really the only place where I’m not 100% in agreement with Andy’s eloquent review:
While I think the album is wonderfully creative and defiantly non-conformist — and while I love the phrase “weaponise weirdness” — “weird” isn’t the dominant adjective I would use to describe the album. But I confess that this may be because, possibly, I myself am weird.
Anyway, give this stream your attention, and remember that no two songs really sound exactly alike. If you like what you hear, and I hope you do, here’s where to get Kaiserschnitt:
http://dmp666.bandcamp.com/album/kaiserschnitt