AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANOXIDE — “MORALS AND DOGMA”

Twelve years have passed since the birth of Anoxide somewhere in London. In that time they have released a pair of EPs, a demo, and a couple of singles, but nothing in the last six years. And so it comes as something of a surprise that two days from now they will release an album via Ghastly Music, their full-length debut at last.

They’ve titled it Morals & Dogma, and packed it with 9 songs (one of them an instrumental) that explore such subjects as the influence of misinformation in a media-saturated world, inescapable cycles of systemic corruption within society, the exacerbation of socio-economic disparity and the devastating effects of austerity policies on the working class and marginalized communities, the resurgence of far right ideologies, and visions of dystopian futures produced by suffering and inequality.

Weighty subjects to be sure, and there’s powerful heft in the music too, but also head-spinning adventures, as you’ll discover through our full album premiere today.

photo by Maxwell Bamber

Anoxide have joked that the album is “the musical equivalent of busting a nut”:

To describe the Anoxide sound, it is universally agreed by respected academics that you need to have an IQ just as low as the band. But in the words of terrified onlookers and loved ones, it can be described as a shameful orgy of death, groove and black metal with an unhealthy serving of melody.

There might seem to be a disconnect between that self-deprecating and lighthearted description and the seriousness of the music’s lyrical themes, but although Anoxide might not want to openly admit it, the music turns out to be pretty serious too, and pretty seriously good.

The opener “Simulacrum“, for example, is a black-hearted beast that brutalizes listeners with avalanche drumming and bleak riffs that seem to whine in agony and wail like fracturing sirens. Gruesome roars and screeching screams add fury to the signs of despair, and the music itself becomes furious, with drums blasting, tremolo’d fretwork boiling and writhing, and cold sledgehammer-like blows pounding anything that tries to escape the mayhem.

But that’s not all that happens. Without warning, frenetic fretwork bursts upon the scene in freakish spasms; an eerily swirling yet ecstatic melody surfaces (leading into an episode of stunning decimation); the same kind of freakishness thrives in a guitar solo; the riffing comes to resemble a ruthless sewing machine stitching steel; the tempos are in flux, and the music also stops and starts, throwing the listener off-balance.

photo by Maxwell Bamber

With just that one song, Anoxide prove that they have more to their game than low-IQ brute-force pulverizing and enraged vocal monstrosity. They also demonstrate impressive technical chops in service of surprising instrumental maneuvers, a taste for melodies that are chilling and alien, and an equal taste for the kind of inventive complexity in their song structures that stands in stark contrast to the caveman intelligence of their bone-smashing grooves.

We won’t delve into all of the other songs in such detail, but you should know that they too present surprising kaleidoscopes of sound.

At full speed and maximum savagery, they create war-zones of unhinged sonic obliteration and vocal derangement that are even more eye-popping than what happens in “Simulacrum“. Yet even there, the band infiltrate plenty of crazed and technically impressive instrumental acrobatics, along with slithering melodies and swirling solo-work whose fluidity contrasts with the darting angularity, shivering seizures, and bunker-busting detonations around them.

The pacing is almost always in flux, and when the band ease up on the throttle, they tend to shift the mood too — dragging it into dismal and oppressive tar-pits. But they might follow that up by firing up the jackhammers and jolting you so fast and hard that you might think all your teeth have come loose, or pulling back the tent flap on a carnival of dazzling instrumental exuberance.

There’s really no way to predict what Anoxide are going to do from moment to moment, or which of the elements will wind up creating the hooks that enable the songs to hang together. Each song turns out to be a spectacle, as if Anoxide spent the last six years filling up a library of ideas and are now hell-bent on showing us all of them.

That library apparently includes volumes on brutal death metal, tech-death,  prog-metal, and slam, as well as engraved bestiaries and stories of sci-fi, horror, and plague (and instruction manuals on how to demolish buildings and bust up pavements).

There’s a risk that some listeners might begin to become exhausted in running this gauntlet, and to become daunted when they see that the final track, “To Starve In Decadence” is more than 10 minutes long. Will they hit the wall when they get there?

Well, perhaps Anoxide realized the risk, because right before that epic-length closer they give the listener “The Weighing Of The Scales“, which is a shocker of a different kind — a soft, classically influenced acoustic guitar instrumental that then unfolds into an electric guitar performance with a jazz-fusion air. Things do get louder, darker, and much more intense before that song ends, but it still makes for a wise break before the big closer.

That closer includes its own surprises — some really big ones that make it the most fascinating of all the album tracks. So don’t hit the wall when you get there — keep going, it’s well worth it, like Morals & Dogma as a whole.

 

 

ANOXIDE is:
Chris Butterworth – Vocals
Alex Houlder – Guitar
Jack Taylor – Bass
Michael Heraghty – Drums

The promotional materials for the album state: “The band don’t like to be limited by any one subgenre but fans of Gojira, Opeth and Meshuggah will feel right at home.”

Morals & Dogma was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jack Stephens. It features artwork by the great Adam Burke, and a logo by Vojtěch Doubek (Moonrotlogos).

PRE-ORDER:
MVD Shop (US) https://bit.ly/3yu61PG
BigCartel (UK, EU) https://bit.ly/4dpEo9l
https://anoxide.bandcamp.com/album/morals-dogma

FOLLOW ANOXIDE:
https://www.facebook.com/Anoxide
https://www.instagram.com/anoxideofficial/