(written by Islander)
Commas are critical units of punctuation. “Let’s eat Grandpa!” is not the same as “Let’s eat, Grandpa!” Or, as in the joke about pandas and firearms, “Eats shoots and leaves” is not the same as “Eats, shoots, and leaves”. But even though Aggressive Perfector named their new album “Come Creeping Fiends“, I’m still reading it as “Come, Creeping Fiends”, i.e., as an invitation to people like us rather than a preview (or warning) about what happens within the course of the album.
Well, now that you have that interpretation of the title in your head, which you now won’t be able to forget, we’ll provide our own invitation to listen to the album, an invitation that goes on for much longer than the grammatical contortion we’ve applied to the record’s name.
Or, you could skip the invitations, scroll down, and just listen to all the evil songs now, before Dying Victims Productions releases this magnificently diabolical album on March 27th.
“Evil” is indeed the best one-word description for these nine tracks, though these Manchester marauders manifest wickedness and depravity in different ways, using different stylistic ingredients. Some of these fiends do indeed come creeping, but others run riot, weave seductive carnal spells, or sink hearts low.
The album opener, “Dead Undead“, is a witchy piece of work, with a shining and frantically swirling opening riff that seizes attention very damned fast — but the song also gets much more monstrous, menacing, and even morbid. The vocals, when they arrive, are as raw as sores and as maniacal as… FIENDS!… and the music brazenly blares, ecstatically bounces, and feverishly shivers.
“Dead Undead” also introduces listeners to the hulking and throbbing burliness of Aggressive Perfector’s bass and the compulsiveness of the drum-grooves, which together provide a heavy, primal thrust beneath all the infernal vocal insanity, the high-flying riffage, and the bursts of black-magic soloing (which manages to introduce moments of haunting misery as well as magic).
As an introductory statement, that album opener accomplishes a couple of other things too: It reveals a production process that has yielded exhilarating clarity, but somehow without sapping the music of its reptile-brain nastiness, and it’s proof positive of Aggressive Perfector’s proficiency in loading up their music with potent hooks.
But, as mentioned earlier, the evils that Aggressive Perfector have generated take different shapes. While “Strange Companion“, “Fiend In You“, and “Denied by the Reaper” are further pulse-pumping experiences in black-magic delirium, like the accompaniment to rutting revels among witches and warlocks (and ones that includes lustful near-singing as well as crazed screaming and cut-throat snarls), those songs also include moments of hellish grandeur, and they reinforce the impression that Aggressive Perfector’s music is as beholden to wellsprings of classic heavy metal and punk as it is to black metal and thrash.
Although the songs rarely let a listener’s heart slow down, the moods do change. “Like A Beast“, for example, comes across as a more pernicious and poisonous affair, with hints of torment and torture in the musical mix, and “Obscene Cult” conjures visions of merciless goat-horned demons cruelly thrusting as well as romping — but that song includes both especially nasty vocals accompanied by mysteriously glittering melodies.
The longest song, “Harlot’s Spell“, is the album’s most multi-faceted piece in an album where spinning facets is the order of the day to begin with. It showcases the nuanced nimbleness of the bass-work, the dynamism of the drumming, and the mesmeric morphing of the riffs and leads, which pull listeners in a variety of emotional directions, both high and low — and the soloing does sound like the conjuring of spells, even if they sometimes sound sad.
Every one of the songs gets its hooked claws dug into listeners. No throw-aways here, they’re all thrilling to hear, straight through the sinister and grieving “Return of the Axe” and even the relatively brief instrumental album closer, “Gallows Eve“.
So, stop creeping forward, you fiends, time to dive right into this wicked heavy metal pageant without further delay:
AGGRESSIVE PERFECTOR is:
Mr. 666 – Bass,
Intimidator – Drums
Dan Chainshaw – Vocals, Guitars
Dying Victims will release Come Creeping Fiends on variant vinyl editions and CD with a variety of other paraphenalia included, as well as digitally. Find more info about them via the links below.
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.dyingvictims.com
https://dyingvictimsproductions.bandcamp.com/album/come-creeping-fiends
AGGRESSIVE PERFECTOR:
https://www.instagram.com/aggressiveperfector_
https://www.facebook.com/AggressivePerfectorBand/
https://aggressiveperfector.bandcamp.com/album/come-creeping-fiends