Locrian and Mamiffer - Bless Them That Curse You

March 8, 2012

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There is an easy way for me to cheapen a musical experience and mislead my readers, at the same time: tag a “post-” in front of something. That prefix has come to mean a specific vamping song structure — sort of a heavy metal bolero — and nothing else. Worse, post-metal carries the implications that A) metal is no more, and B) post-metal is a continuation of that, but, at the same time, C) is not metal. Those are untrue. Clearly, metal continues; clearly, bands like Isis, Pelican, and the rest exist within it.

The same cannot be said of Locrian or Mamiffer. The two groups’ collaborative album, “Bless Them That Curse You”, is not metal. The music is constructed with metallic materials — distorted guitar, screamed vocals — but disregards the rigid structural form that defines metal. I’m not certain Invisible Oranges would be considering this music were Mamiffer not an Aaron Turner project, or if Haunting the Chapel (RIP) hadn’t showered so much praise on Locrian in the past. In a parallel universe, no metal blogs ever feature this sound, and it appeals to an entirely different group of people.

The ultimate inversion: Faith Coloccia’s acoustic(-sounding) piano takes the lead role, and guides the best songs on “Bless Them” to their culminations, while percussion and guitar simmer behind it. The piano gradually becomes the center of attention and charm; without it, the songs might wallow into ennui. When the screamed vocals and more propulsive percussion took over at the very end of “Metis/Amaranthine/the Emperor,” presumably the Emperor passage, I found myself wanting more key-tickling and less hardcore. The experiment works.

In a few years we may look back at the “NeurIsis” groups as a stepping stone to these bands and their kissing cousins; those critically acclaimed “post-” bands did away with the verse-chorus-bridge skeleton, but left the cellular structure — the riff — intact. If that happens, it will be the second time that Aaron Turner has taken part in re-drawing the lines in the sand headbangers so love to bicker over. I doubt Mamiffer is the endgame of Turner’s systematic deconstruction of extreme music, but his new work, especially Bless Them, could be an argument that what defines music — things like mood or atmosphere — is subjective. “Metal” really exists in listeners’ heads.

— Joseph Schafer

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HEAR BLESS THEM THAT CURSE YOU