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CARRIER FLUX  Objection  CD   (Code666)   14.98


��While the surreal cover art might look like something off of an older death metal album, Carrier Flux's latest full-length Objection offers more of the kind of progressive, offbeat black metal that I've come to expect from their label Code666, while sounding for the most part like nothing else on the label. I actually first heard Carrier Flux after accidentally stumbling across the videos that the one-man band had posted on Youtube, featuring a rather demented industrial-metal cover of Q Lazarus's "Goodbye Horses" (you know, that song from Silence Of The Lambs) and a symphonic, Swede-death reworking of Billy Joel's "Pressure", both of which displayed a rather twisted creativity. You won't find any covers of 80's pop music on the band's third album, but these twelve tracks do feature an even more skilled and atmospheric take on black metal that gets shot through with not only some lingering traces of industrial metal, but also weird folky elements that give this more unique flair.

�� Objection opens with a short, Goblin-esque instrumental, blending acoustic guitar strum and ominous melody on "Imperative Regression" before hurtling at top speed into the title track, a violent blast of hyperspeed black metal that quickly gives way to a strange gothy mid-tempo lurch, the vocals a quirky, throaty almost British sounding croak that's surprisingly enunciated for this sort of music; throughout the album, there's a constant contrast between that odd goth-tinged singing and the harsher, more murderous blackened screams. When the music blasts off back into the mechanical tremolo picking and thunderous blast beats, the sound transforms into sweeping, super dramatic black metal with massive hooks surfacing throughout the album, super catchy and blazing and sinister. There's almost a pop sensibility at work on songs like "Midas Earth", as the band digs its black talons into your brain with their skillful interplay between epic blasting and slower, almost theatrical passages, huge catchy riffs popping up and carrying the music, balanced between anthemic hooks and vicious aggression.

�� But where Objection really stands out is with the oddball folky parts that Carrier Flux scatters throughout the songs. These folky elements show up on songs like "The Path of Children Damned", where the blazing, complex blackened metal crush will suddenly give way to short passages of strange dramatic folkiness that for all the world remind me of the Decemberists, weird dark shanties immersed within the song's intricate, Dissection-esque black metal. Those folky acoustic guitars and melodies recur throughout the album, the music sometimes giving over completely to passages of moody folk and weirdly theatrical vocals, and elsewhere apocalyptic spoken word readings emerge over clanking industrial metal, or the vocals break into a powerful, almost operatic delivery over more Goblinesque creepiness. And later tracks like "A Cancer of Foundations" offer swirling, elliptical blasts of proggy black metal with more of that mechanized, vaguely industrial feel, while still conveying that off-kilter vibe. It's a cool mix of progressive black metal, ramshackle folk and soaring Scandinavian style melodies that Carrier Flux whips up on this album.


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