A TRIO OF TWISTS: THOUGHTS OF IONESCO, MIND SO FRAGILE, BUFIHIMAT

 

The three songs I’ve collected here are off our usual beaten paths. I would consider all of them metal, but they are all twists on convention, and for that matter they’re all kind of twisted in other ways. Obviously, I found myself liking all three quite a lot or they wouldn’t be here. And because I thought they would make an interesting feature grouped in this way, I’ve separated them from a bunch of other new songs that are included in Part 3 of the SEEN AND HEARD post that’s coming later today.

THOUGHTS OF IONESCO

There’s a big article at The Font of All Human Knowledge devoted to Detroit-based Thoughts of Ionesco. As I write this, however, it’s missing one important fact, though the hive mind responsible for The Font’s content will undoubtedly update it soon. The missing fact is that Thoughts of Ionesco have reunited and will be releasing their first new material since 2001. In fact, they’ve already released something new.

 

1999 in Pontiac, MI (photo by Cj Benninger)

 

Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of Thoughts of Ionesco. You can just click that link in the preceding paragraph and get educated. But you might want to watch this lyric video first and then decide.

The video is for a song called “Culture of the Eternal Snake“, and it’s one of four on a new EP named Skar Cymbals. I had to watch it twice, except the second time I didn’t look at the video, because the first time I got totally sucked into the lyrics and didn’t pay close attention to the music.

Hate to say it, but most metal lyric videos forget the very important requirement that in order for a lyric video to work, the lyrics ought to actually be worth reading. The lyrics in “Culture of the Eternal Snake” most definitely are, brayed and yelled and shrieked by a street-corner poet, to the accompaniment of a bruising, battering, borderline-deranged effusion of destructive and mercurial noise.

The accompanying visuals are weird, but then again so is the music, and in retrospect everything seems to fit together.

Skar Cymbals will be released on June 23rd by Corpse Flower Records.

(thanks to starkweather for the tip on this one)

Pre-order:
https://corpseflowerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/thoughts-of-ionesco-skar-cymbals

Thoughts of Ionesco on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/thoughtsofionesco/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MIND SO FRAGILE

I saw a link to this next song and video on Facebook. I happened to watch it soon after experiencing that Thoughts of Ionesco video. It was kismet.

These lyrics are engrossing, too. I assume they were written with tongue in cheek, a satire on our prevailing mode of existence, but they could be serious. I don’t know for sure.

In fact, I don’t know much about the band at all, except that they are from Finland and this song is their first single. The name is “Keep It Black“, described as “a handful of instructions for those soldiers who are still alive”.

The song is damned catchy, with melodic hooks that embed themselves just as deeply as the lyrics do, but the music is also sinister… and twisted. The vocals are clean, as is the scintillating guitar solo, and both are very good.

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/MindSoFragile/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUFIHIMAT

I don’t know anything about the lyrics to this final song. In this case, the lyrics weren’t a part of the draw, or a reason why I decided to include the song with the first two here. It’s the music itself that proved to be a very impressive brain-twister.

The band is Bufihimat and they’re from Voronezh, Russia. They released an EP in 2009 named 0, and a debut album last week named I. As you could probably guess, the cover art for the album was created by Paolo Girardi.

The song below is “Last Journey Through Pain“, which is on the new album but was originally released as a single in 2015. The person who recommended the band to me (starkweather, again) said they reminded him of the angular death/grind of early Antigama, with forays into blackened territory and with more deathly vocals — and I would agree.

For much of its length, this particular song goes like a bat out of hell, driven by blinding drumwork, unstable riffs, and freakish, dissonant guitar emanations. When the song isn’t going like a bat out of hell, it’s dishing up surprises — including the big one where you think the song has reached the end, and instead it resumes in a way that might make you think a funky jazz band kidnapped the one that started the song.

You can stream the whole album here (I haven’t had time to do that yet, but I damn sure will).

https://vk.com/bufihimat