The concept behind Construct of Lethe‘s new album A Kindness Dealt In Venom is challenging, and frankly, very disturbing. The music is also challenging, frequently so wildly unconventional that it could be branded “experimental death metal”, and in its extravagant twists and turns and instrumental spectacles, some disturbing and others exuberantly delirious, it creates a transfixing union with the concept.
The music is meant to be heard as one continuous song, 44 minutes in length, which follows the shattering conceptual narrative. However, it does include separate segments as it proceeds along its traumatic course, and we have two of those for you today — two that are among the most head-spinning episodes in the stunning pageant that the album creates.
We should turn first to Tony Petrocelly, who conceived the concept, for an explanation of what the album is about:
“I wrote the lyrics this time around. They’re very personal and describe periods of depression and self-hatred I’ve gone through over the last 5 years. The lyrics are told from the point of view of a person’s inner voice, but that inner voice hates the person it belongs to. Over the course of the album it lets its feelings be known in an attempt to make the person kill themself, which ultimately it does. The title A Kindness Dealt in Venom signifies that the inner voice thinks it’s doing the world a favor by poisoning its person’s mind and getting them to remove themself from the world.”
In expressing this narrative of suicidal depression, Petrocelly performed guitar, bass, and synths, with Kishor Haulenbeek (Black Harvest) voicing the words, Patrick Bonvin (Near Death Condition) on lead guitar, and drummer extraordinaire Kevin Paradis (Benighted) rounding out the recording lineup.
What they’ve done together really does seem like an extreme-metal pageant, a constantly morphing stylistic hybrid on a grand scale that often seems like the work of musical mad scientists as they fashion experiences of “abjection, rage, depression and suicide”.
The final words on the album, in the segment titled “Monument to Failure“, are these:
What you would frame as noble slouches when touched by death.
Even a life of charity falters, stung by relentless inertia.
Your life will culminate in a moment of silent, exquisite violence.
A whimper, a wavering breath, stillness. I am the snake in the cradle.
The final four segments that immediately follow this are all instrumental-only performances, and it’s the first two of those that we’re presenting today — “Paroxysm as Pragmatism” and “Raw Nerve, Iron Will“.
Trying to carefully map in words what happens in these two segments would be a fool’s errand — the movements are too extravagantly elaborate, the layering of guitar tones too multifarious, the performances too bewildering.
Sometimes Paradis methodically uses the snare to chop like an ax, or to punch like a nail gun, or to erupt in automatic-weapons fire. Industrial-style electronics briefly appear. The music also pounds like pile-drivers and it rings in dim and dismal but hallucinatory tones at the outset of the second segment before beginning to dart and blare.
But mainly, what happens in these segments is head-spinning, as the guitars yowl and warble, sizzle and spasm, scream in pain and swirl like sonic sorcery. By the end, they become a nova of exhilarating delirium.
The fantastic cover art for the album is the work of Kishor Haulenbeek. Transcending Obscurity will release the album on June 15th, CD, tape, and digital formats, with related apparekl and other merch, and T.O. recommends it for fans of Morbid Angel, Mithras, Immolation, Nile, and Hour of Penance.
Find more info via the links below, and then also listen to two other segments from the album — “Denial In Abstraction / Flickering” — which premiered previously.
PRE-ORDER:
https://constructoflethedm.bandcamp.com/album/a-kindness-dealt-in-venom
https://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
https://eu.tometal.com/
CONSTRUCT OF LETHE:
https://www.facebook.com/constructoflethe
https://constructoflethe.bandcamp.com/