Malhkebre – Prostration
Previously seeing the light of this doomed planet as a 10″ via Battlesk’rs, “Prostration” from France’s Malhkebre is a well produced and sufficiently agonizing dose of fervent black metal. Draped with a sharp harshness in the guitar tone, the overall delivery and excellent/wandering screaming style possesses a very straight forward clash of aggression up against a weird (for lack of better term) edge in the vocal structures and musical delivery that is somehow quite common among French bands. Antaeus had it. Mutiillation had it. So did Vlad Tepes and countless other black legion bands… that slightly off sense of songwriting, whether it be timing, odd vocals, or backwards sounding riffs, the French benefit for making something touched in the head sounding that is undeniably their own. “Prostration” is strengthened by a busy/technically proficient drummer that takes the dissonant, though often simplistic riff ideas, and lifts them up to be a lot tenser with his perplexing, nearly tribal patterns. The production is very clean allowing the unique guitar tone to really carry this band, as well as some innovative songwriting, making it so that Malhkebre does indeed arrive at a style that is atypical and strong. In the end, “Prostration” contains 4 well developed tracks of sickly black metal that left me interested in hearing how they continue to grow into this style as they continue. I wish this MCD was longer.
Ahdistuksen Aihio Productions
Worm Gear 