reflections of darkness e-zine
Like many others as well, the name Famine appeared on my radar through the FRACTURED album ‘Only Human Remains’ in 2005. What I couldn’t know at that time was that this guy actually has a history as a producer for more than a decade then with involvements in various projects in different genres. Nevertheless ‘Every Mirror turns Black’ is his first official release to date and what a release it is…
The opener ‘Cortruisse’ starts harmless, so harmless in fact that it’s already suspicious and indeed after the stuttering beats and the samples led us on a wrong path for a while, the track suddenly explode with a fireworks of glitching rhythms, it’s hard o follow it in the first place. ‘Seven’ follows the line of glitch, but in this case, the glitches which have been precisely placed over fundament of broken eats, seem to create their own rhythm inside the composition. All this is nothing compared to what is to follow with ‘Blood Sacrifice’ and initially, the thought to be in the wrong film ripened in my head. Harsh guitar riffs and fast drum parts flooded the room, followed by high-octane break beats and FAMINE’s parade discipline the glitching. Don’t get me wrong, as strange as that might sound, this combination of Black Metal and electronics is brilliant and I wondered why no one came up with that idea before. ‘Idle Flattery’ develops a life of its own with some kind of mutational algorithm under the surface, which is always sidestepping, just when you’re thinking you’ve figured this song out. ‘Optical Stimuli’ spreads a rather solemn mood with spherical bells, even vocal fragments in different shapes and manipulated states can be heard. Again the rhythms are far from being ordinary and are intriguing and captivating at the same time.
‘I Don’t Believe’ and ‘Renounce Christ’ bridge to the Black Metal again by infusing the raw power f the fast guitar riffs into a costume of unrelenting and fierce rhythmical brutality that fathoms the deepest regions of musical violence; Especially ‘I Don’t Believe’ surprises with a bass that is able to burst your window panes. My initial problem with ‘hands’ was to find the structure or more precisely the order inside the chaos of fidgety rhythms and samples yet when the melodic layer comes in, a slight shade of structure evolves, getting clearer, the more the song progresses. The specialty of ‘We Fuck Together’ (Yeah nice title, I know) is that it doesn’t solely depend on electronically generated drum sounds to build up a rhythm, but uses a myriad of sampled sounds to construct an ultra complex network of beats and it’s hard to believe that one human being conceived this. ’Lesion Powder Sickness’ gets along almost without any melody and places a 100% emphasis on the creation of rhythms. The finishing track ‘Konstantine Raudive’ is presumably named after the scientist, who was investigating the Electronic Voice Phenomena, “sections of static noise on the radio or electronic recording media that are interpreted by paranormal investigators as voices speaking words usually attributed to ghosts or spirits”. That would explain the other-worldliness of this track, which seems to float in other dimensions, in the great beyond, where pale shades pass you by and concentrated clouds of ambience line your way. The beats however, remain down to earth, even if not ordinary and for the last time display a stunning complexity.
You can hear all the hard work Famine’s put into the creation of ‘Every Mirror turns Black’ and all people, who like sonic experiments as every single track on the album is one, will thank him in buying this awesome record and maybe even a bigger audience will discover Famine for themselves now. A highlight for me is without any doubt the fusion of Black metal and his skills on the synths. That has to be played live in my opinion Another one that really cast a spell on me is the wonderfully atmospheric ‘Konstantine Raudive’ that is so different from the other tracks on the album At the end there’s only one thing left to say: BUY this record it’s worth every cent.
-- Sebastian Huhn [9/10]
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connexion bizarre e-zine e-zine
An odd little selection, this, as it veers wildly from relative peace and quiet (as evidenced by tracks like "Optical Stimuli") to unbridled demonic possession (typified in this case by "Renounce Christ") with hardly a pause in between. There are traces of jungle, hints of industrial and spatters of black metal littering what is otherwise an accomplished piece of IDM in the vein of Download, particularly their seminal release, "The Eyes of Stanley Pain" (1996).
The real gem on this album, however, does not fall into this category: "Blood Sacrifice" is an absolute masterpiece, blending harsh, thrash metal guitars and double-bass pedal drums with degraded signal mixing, circuit-bent glitches and vocals dredged from the pits of hell, all overlaid on a fast, eccentric breakcore drum line. While other tracks on the album (like "I Don't Believer") attempt similar stylistic crossovers, the result is less impressive. Even though this introduction of guitars into an otherwise predominantly electronic recording is nothing new (industrial-rock legends Ministry spent most of the 1990s producing six-string savagery, while contemporary terror EBM merchants Psyclon Nine recently invented their own brand of "black electro" on their "INRI" album in 2005), Famine still manages to create something that is guaranteed to make even the most jaded listener sit up and take notice. Please keep in mind that "Every Mirror Turns Black" is not a black metal album by any means; rather, it is a celebration of all things irreligious and angry that happens to make use of certain typical stylistic devices as a means to an end.
In general, this is a particularly painful album to categorize, as it represents somewhere in the vicinity of fourteen years of music production experience coming to a head - a very likely reason for the disparate influences discernible on the album. But that doesn't mean it's a bad album - on the contrary, Famine deliver something that's difficult to get into, but even harder to stop listening to.
-- -- David vander Merwe [7.5/10]
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