���Despite the fact that the band has been around since 1997, chances are you've never heard of Japanese death-thrashers Basilisk. Formed by former members of the cult Japanese death metal outfit Monarchie Infernale, Basilisk, for some reason, took their sweet time to deliver their first album, with End Of Catastrophe finally materializing well over a decade since they first came together. The end result is pretty killer, though, a blast of eccentric death/thrash that blends together some subtle blackened elements as well as a dose of proggy complexity that reminds me of some of my fave classic prog-thrash outfits. Sort of an anomaly coming from the usually uber-doom obsessed Weird Truth imprint, but this album is well worth checking out if you're into solid but quirky thrash and the sort of offbeat sensibilities that often course through so much Japanese metal. In fact, when you start to leaf through the booklet for Catastrophe, you're confronted by band photos of these spiked and heavily leathered maniacs that look like something out of some bizarro Japanese cyberpunk epic, like amped-up extras from Sōgo Ishii's Burst City, black metal leather and chains and wild-looking spiked headgear cranked up to an absurd level of fashion terror. These guys definitely have a look.
��� The music is equally as crazed, opening with the dark soundtrack-esque industrial symphonic rumblings of "Sign Of Baptism" before blasting into a nine song assault of blazing blastbeat-riddled blackthrash, the weirdly drawled vocals sung in Japanese, the songs complex progged-out thrash attacks belted out at supersonic speed. The guitar parts can get pretty crazed, often slipping into wild, almost carnivalesque melodies that most definitely recall some of the earlier Sigh stuff, and the songs surge into weird off-time breakdowns and proggy shredfests, shifting constantly from one dissonant thrash riff or odd off-kilter rhythmic breakdown to the next. Synthesizers add a cold electronic sheen to many of the songs, and bassist Takuya injects some great, nimble-fingered runs and offbeat bass parts in these songs that add another layer of technicality to Basilisk's oblique death-thrash; it's not like he's channeling Steve DiGiorgio or anything, but his performance definitely brings some interesting shading to this stuff. There are a few other tracks of vast cinematic ambience like "Fathomless Depth Crimson Dawn" that are scattered throughout the album, washes of ominous orchestral drift and distant bells breaking through the blast-fury, and there's moments of offbeat riffery, complicated drumming patterns and oddball melody like the middle of "Nosferatu" that's as unexpected and as bonkers as anything from Coroner or Sadus. I definitely had the feeling while listening to this that these guys were a lot more informed by those kinds of 80's prog-thrash greats than contemporary death or black metal, and that vibe makes Basilisk's debut stand out from much of the extreme metal I've been hearing out of Japan lately. They've got a distinct style of their own here, but fans of similarly eccentric Japanese black thrash bands like Abigail and Sigh may find this stuff well worth investigating.