So what was the last Dead Neanderthals release? The "Click" EP? Wow. That came out before New Year's Eve, already over half a year ago!
DEAD NEANDERTHALS - Specters (citron vinyl LP) (2023)
But seriously, Otto Kokke and René Aquarius are still incredibly prolific. As you can tell by the similar cover artwork, their new album is a succession of "Ghosts", their 2019 cooperation with Scott Hedrick (Skeletonwitch), and it's ridiculous how long I had to browse through my Dead Neanderthals tag to get to the review of that one.
The second album in this trio formation picks up some of the modern Swans vibes of "Ghosts", but mixes it with the Kraut Rock feeling of "IXXO" and the brutal crunch of "Metal", so yes, it continues the trend of Otto playing the certainly not always obvious synthesizers instead of saxophone to form the repetitive backbone of the two longtracks "Necrology" and "Banishment".
Again the edition of the third member's idea changes the dynamics completely. Since they didn't record in a room together, yet the Dead Neanderthals duo still provided the foundation, the disciplined minimalistic restriction is still intact, but it obviously crashes with an abundance of guitar and keyboard layers Scott Hedrick adds on top of it.
So even if you have only one true change like the switch to a slower tempo for the last couple of minutes in "Banishment", it feels like both tracks are going through a lot more phases, because there's such a neat subtle increase of always new sounds being added going on.
And these sounds bring so much atmosphere and steadily raise to such huge climaxes! As they evolve from stages of Ambient and hypnotic Psych to Post Rock and sheer hellspawnish Blut Aus Nord worship, they suck you into a vortex and spit you out ito the zero-g void. All while the untiring AquariousKokke machine just keeps on going and going.
It is gloriously crushing and elevating a the same time!
There seems to be a pattern (see "Corporeal Flux" with Aaron Turner or their DNMF project with Machinefabriek), but whenever Dead Neanderthals team up with a third creative party, there's a high likelihood of that work going right to my favorites within their quickly growing discography. (My personal collection is between twenty and thirty releases strong - and that doesn't even count all related bands like Cryptae or Plague Organ.)
Verdict: Fantastic! Especially the last quarter of this album is one of the mightiest things I've heard this year.
Again the edition of the third member's idea changes the dynamics completely. Since they didn't record in a room together, yet the Dead Neanderthals duo still provided the foundation, the disciplined minimalistic restriction is still intact, but it obviously crashes with an abundance of guitar and keyboard layers Scott Hedrick adds on top of it.
So even if you have only one true change like the switch to a slower tempo for the last couple of minutes in "Banishment", it feels like both tracks are going through a lot more phases, because there's such a neat subtle increase of always new sounds being added going on.
And these sounds bring so much atmosphere and steadily raise to such huge climaxes! As they evolve from stages of Ambient and hypnotic Psych to Post Rock and sheer hellspawnish Blut Aus Nord worship, they suck you into a vortex and spit you out ito the zero-g void. All while the untiring AquariousKokke machine just keeps on going and going.
It is gloriously crushing and elevating a the same time!
There seems to be a pattern (see "Corporeal Flux" with Aaron Turner or their DNMF project with Machinefabriek), but whenever Dead Neanderthals team up with a third creative party, there's a high likelihood of that work going right to my favorites within their quickly growing discography. (My personal collection is between twenty and thirty releases strong - and that doesn't even count all related bands like Cryptae or Plague Organ.)
Verdict: Fantastic! Especially the last quarter of this album is one of the mightiest things I've heard this year.
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