Vincebus Eruptum S/T CD/LP

Load Records

review by Scott Langlais (Scoots):

Vincebus Eruptum's eponymous debut album on Load Records is a hard document to pin down. Alternating between brilliant and retrograde, fast and slow, austere and humorous, it is an album of contradictions. Its sounds are those of a war against bourgeois complacency-the inexorable rumbling of titanic war machines and the roar of Black Metal jet engines. Mayhem-style Black Metal is an obvious part of VE's musical heritage, as are Sabbath, Can, the Swans, and more contemporary bands like the Melvins and Godhead Silo. Gut-wrenching bass and thunderous drums lay down the framework for a minimalist assault that boasts more bludgeoning power than Mike Tyson at a soccer riot. Lyrically, these guys do what hardcore did for the rock song format in the 80s-cutting away all the extraneous bullshit, virtuosity, and self-important wankery till nothing remains but the bare indivisible essence of form. The songs are tales of urban angst and futility born of Providence's post-industrial sprawl.

Yet despite their bone-crushing sound and faux-Black Metal album cover, VE's sense of humor sets them apart from their legendarily humorless Norwegian counterparts. When the blitzkrieg attack of "The Novice" shifts back into slow motion for the solemn pronouncement "You're a one-pump chump," all of Black Metal's rigidity is thrown out the window along with their corpse-paint and Viking paraphernalia. It's hard to feel Satanic headbanging along with the mantra-like "Who Farted?" Clearly they are aware of this irony, as they further dissect the genre in the self-titled song that ends
the album: "This is that kill your mother kill your father music/Makes you want to burn down a school, burn down a church, burn down a house." I don't know if that's true, but it did make me want to play the album about 50 times in a row.

This is quite simply the best new album I've heard in years, and undoubtedly one of Providence's most ferocious and unforgiving recordings. Throw this on the turntable and forget that nu-metal, Clay Aiken, and the wannabe garage rock explosion ever happened.