EPISODE 13: “ULTIMATE STERILIZATION”

Episode 13 is a Turkish metal band who we’ve featured once before at NCS — though it was in July 2010 when we did that (here). Since then, the band have released their third album called Death Reclaims the Earth. That album was finished at the time of our earlier feature, but hadn’t yet been released because the band was looking for a label outside Turkey to increase exposure to their music. The one they found is a personal favorite of mine — Misantrof AntiRecords, the non-commercial Norwegian label founded and run by Daniel Vrangsinn (Carpathian Forest, Vrangsinn).

Vrangsinn’s philosophy is to let bands retain full creative control and ownership of their work. He provides a platform for distributing the music — free of charge for downloads. I’ve found lots of great shit through Misantrof, and so seeing the partnership between them and Episode 13 was a nice discovery. Death Reclaims the Earth is available for download at Misantrof (here), either as high-quality FLAC files or as mp3’s.

Misantrof released this album last October, but I was diverted with other shit at the time and just overlooked the news. What reminded me of the album was a recent Episode 13 post on FB that featured one of the tracks from the album called “Ultimate Sterilization”. So, I stopped and listened to the song, and I’m really glad I did. I think you’ll be glad you did, too. (more after the jump . . .)

Episode 13 waste no time with an intro and instead vault directly into a scathing assault of ringing tremolo guitars and blasting drums, with frontman Ozan’s misanthropic, cracked-ice vocals shrieking the lyrics. Catchy-as-hell riffing accents the opening minutes of the song, but then — approaching the halfway mark — everything falls away except for a massive, black-hole of a bass line and slowly pounding drums. The guitars eventually begin to ring out again with a piercing, morbid melody, and the song ramps up to speed once more — but the pacing drops again into a doom-like crawl over the last minute.

While the music has a firm toehold in traditional Gorgoroth-style black metal, its searing melodies and rhythmic dynamism leaven the rancidity, and the musicianship and production are quite good. I’m curious what those of you more steeped in black metal knowledge think of this track, and of the album as a whole. I really like what I’m hearing. This is “Ultimate Sterilization”:

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/5-Ultimate-sterilization.mp3|titles=Episode 13 – Ultimate Sterilization]

By the way, when Episode 13 posted a link to this track on their FB page, they accompanied it with these lines uttered by Agent Smith in The Matrix movie:

I’d like to share a revelation I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we … are the cure.”

Interestingly, the album cover was created by Seattle-based artists Seraph + Splendor. They did it using real blood.

Here are Episode 13 band links:

Episode 13 on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/episode13

Episode 13 on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com /episode13official

Episode 13 on ReverbNation: http://www.reverbnation.com/episode13