Aborym
Fire Walk With Us

"Love us or hate us but don't try to imitate us since we really don't belong to this planet"

Peeking into the booklet, one can't help but notice this rather controversial phrase, which certainly doesn't help our homegrown ABORYM win any special favor from an Italian audience that, in the metal scene (allow me to say), remains somewhat closed-minded and forever focused on what comes from abroad.
Honestly, even I am the first to be puzzled by this statement, but after listening to the album in question, one truly has to reevaluate. Let's be honest—I might be biased because I am madly in love with the creature of Malfeitor Fabban & co., but in my opinion, anyone seeking destruction, nihilism, and sonic assaults in music cannot remain indifferent to the technical and compositional abilities of the Roman combo. If the debut Kali Yuga Bizarre, despite its excellent quality (let it be clear), was still on a level of pseudo-artistic transition, and the latest effort With No Human Intervention swings between memorable songs and others well below average, this Fire Walk With Us is, in my opinion, the diamond of the Roman group.
But let's go in order: the production first of all, much maligned everywhere, but in my opinion in the Industrial Black Metal field, it is nearly unmatched, with a drum machine that takes your breath away and is always at the forefront, especially in the frenetic passages (listen to the accelerations of "Love The Death As The Life" to believe it) and a voice... well, Attila Cshiar's performance alone ("Mayhem", "Tormentor", "Plasma Pool") is a masterpiece in itself.
The guitars are instead saturated, compressed, heavy, and martial, and in my opinion, despite their volume being sometimes too low, they integrate well into the general Chaos generated by these Alien (!?) conquest-thirsty beings!

Regarding the individual songs, I think each one deserves a separate comment: from the opener "Our Sentence" to the 5th track "Here is no God S.T.A." (a track of pure and alienating techno-trance), we reach incredible levels, with the peak surely being "Love The Death As The Life," where the lessons of MysticuM (undisputed masters and founding fathers of such sounds) are well felt in the accelerations, not to mention the riff at the end that could lift even a dead person from their seat! Another memorable track is the instrumental "White Space," a classic example of industrial metal, with thick and slowed guitars, schizophrenic solos, sampled voices, and more! With track no.6 "Total Black," they push a little too hard on the accelerator, resulting in my opinion as the most indigestible (and also the least convincing piece of the lot) if only for its excessive length, but fear not, with the subsequent "Sol Sigillum," you breathe masterpiece air again. Very different from the previous ones, it is a piece that can in some ways be attributed to a certain apocalyptic dark ambient, in the footsteps of the very early Raison D'Etre, where you really have the impression that the end of the world is not as far away as imagined. And now it's time for the cover of one of the most ingenious and evocative songs ever composed, ladies and gentlemen "Det Som En Gang Var" by a certain Burzum for those who didn't know! Of course, the original is another thing, but always with that industrial touch that ABORYM manages once again to hit the mark with, bringing back a classic in an extremely modern key (with a final tunz-tunz that doesn't ruin the recreated atmosphere at all).
We approach the end of the album with the dark and disturbing "Theta Paranoia": a simple noise at regular intervals reaches us for over 2 minutes, spilling over into another minimalistic and strongly impactful dark ambient track. Yes, perhaps it could have concluded with a track more similar to those at the opening, since the second part of the album moves on "softer" paths (so to speak), but in the end, it's fine with us!

In conclusion, it must be remembered that this is certainly not an album for every taste, given its perhaps overly exaggerated versatility in spanning musical territories quite far from each other, but fans of a modern black metal heavily indebted to electronic and industrial sounds will surely appreciate this work.
Recommended for fans of: MysticuM, Diabolicum, Black Lodge, Axis Of Perdition, Anaal Nathrakh