A perfect mix of Black-Death-Thrash Metal with some industrial sampers. A storm of pure sonic violence!!!
Amazing debut in the shape of a 4-track EP of the Norwegians Thermal Pulse, a side-project with Kirkebrann, Svikt or Dimension F3H members, in which they play a powerful black death metal with industrial and ambient touches, really interesting!
This is another one of those modern industrial black metal bands who came out after the initial wave of 2002 or so industrial black metal fizzled out because everyone realized how crappy it was. The newer bands in this style have gone in a somewhat different direction: instead of doing their best to fuse black metal melodies with Rammstein krautrock stomp, they've gone in a colder, more ambient-laced direction, not quite as intrinsically full of itself, as all the bands are afraid of another big industrial BM crash which could take them down at any moment. The appropriate level of arrogance is conveyed: this is industrial black metal after all, but now the tone is that of a thug who desperately wants you not to know how his heart flutters when the girl behind the counter at the Panera Bread looks at him.
Thermal Pulse sounds a lot like another entry to the neo-industrial black metal style, and one from the same country, in fact: Black Hole Generator. The closest to this band in style is actually another mostly-unknown-but-desperately-attempting-to-be-known band with a single EP under their belt. Black Hole Generator's cold brand of ambient-laced black metal was riffier than Thermal Pulse, and in some ways was a bit more metallic and definite with its style, as though it hoped to grow up and be Anaal Nathrakh some day. Thermal Pulse is a little different: they're even more ambient (though I don't doubt they want to be Anaal Nathrakh one day too), and as such are probably more subtle and a tad more clever than their fellow Norwegians; there's some interesting elements to this CD which, while not setting the black metal scene on fire, do make you think this band might go somewhere in the near future.
The main body of the music is pure black metal convention: using an attack of blast beats and tremolo riffing to cause an artificial slowdown in your perception of the music, and thus a hypnotic effect. But Thermal Pulse goes the extra mile with a totally droning wall of guitars which change notes achingly slowly over a bed of rigid, mechanical blasting. Vocals don't even attempt at 'singing' most of the time, really: they're just sort of talking in a black metal voice over everything else, giving some speech on what I'd imagine is an appropriately industrial and black metal subject. The blasting drones are actually pretty cool; they form a stark, kind of melodic wall that manages to sound ominous and apocalyptic despite its natural resemblance to post-metal and other lame genres of music. You could almost call this an attempt at backwards Summoning worship if the music wasn't so fast and aggressive.
The central problem for Thermal Pulse, though, is that while they're good at setting up the drone, they don't really know where to go once they have it, and end up either abruptly shifting into another, mostly unrelated musical passage ('Trust Fire, Trust Pain') or just evading the drone altogether ('By Disgust'). Unfortunately, Thermal Pulse isn't that good at making riffier and more dynamic black metal, so when they go into thrashy territory like on the third track, they tend not to go anywhere at all. Granted, they don't go anywhere when they're droning, but in that case the place they sit is pretty interesting: the rivers of blast beats and rounded-edged tremolo riffs make for a nice atmosphere and a pleasing sound, despite not going anywhere special.
Thermal Pulse might be a curiosity band or they might actually be on to something, but this EP is really too short to tell; it could be the start of something new in the industrial black metal scene, or it could merely be a fluke that happened to catch my attention. The content itself is pretty good and this is easy to listen to repeatedly, so I do recommend this for black metal fans, but I'm more interested in what they do after this: hopefully they'll play to their strengths and not cave to the pressures of sounding 'more black metal'.
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