Released
1998
Label
Release
Entertainment
Reviewed by
Michael C. Lund
Contact
Relapse Records
PO Box 251
Millersville, PA 17551
USA
Visit
Last Edit/Update
08 september, 1998
Megaptera
THE CURSE OF THE SCARECROW
Track Listing
1. Disturbance
2. Cog-Wheel Machinery
3. Don't Desecrate The Dead
4. The Curse Of The Scarecrow
5. More Disturbance
6. Hear My Bowels
7. Kingdom Of Death
8. Skullfracture
Megaptera's new CD on Release Entertainment takes the
listener on a journey through every dark and grim place imaginable. The eight tracks
assembled here are in short anthems of death that move forward, propelled by the slowly
turning engines of hell, all oiled and greased by the essence of thick twilight ambience.
Long sequences of dialogue from a number of horror movies have been locked into the
foundations of the music, but, rather than heightening the mood and themes of the
compositions -- in the manner of most bands utilizing film samples, the various movie
excerpts are here subjugated and oppressed by Megaptera's doom-laden
music, to the point where only snippets of these samples are clearly audible.
The majority of the tracks on The
Curse Of The Scarecrow are extended, and make of monotony a strong stylistic element.
"Disturbance," "Don't Desecrate The Dead" and "The Curse Of The
Scarecrow," in particular, plow ahead relentlessly at a slow dirge-like pace.
Rumbling, icy atmospheres flow like a dense fog through the pieces from beginning to end,
while time is kept by steady measured impacts as of steel pistons, and lashing beats that
sound as if someone is being flogged to death. Once locked inside these damp, necrophilous
cells of sound, there is no escape -- like everything ghastly and strange, Megaptera's
music too is enthralling, and in the distance the whisperings of desperate voices and
women's screams promise of even greater horrors and exercises of violence to come.
In this manner, the music of Megaptera
seems to make a statement on the images and media that it feasts upon like so much
carrion. The overpowering gloom and apocalyptic airs that are rolled over the media
samples like nothing so much as a heavy carpet, actually appear to imply that a greater
and much more final horror awaits this culture that worships death and destruction.
Whether this truly is the effect that Megaptera aims to achieve or not,
this tension, between the movie samples and the musical compositions as such, certainly
adds another dimension to the music, and raises it to a higher level.
The material on The Curse Of The
Scarecrow is actually a couple of years old at this point, which explains the
involvement of Mikael Svensson -- who is no longer part of Megaptera
-- on a pair of the tracks. Apparently, the album has passed through the hands of at least
one other record label, before now being made available by Release Entertainment.
And, as usual with this label, the CD has been provided with really nice cover art that
very effectively capture the spirit of the music, displaying more human skulls and bones
than one is likely to encounter this side of the kingdom of death itself.
