Aborym
Shifting.negative

2017 marks the return of Aborym with their seventh album: SHIFTING.negative.

The group led by Fabban has always been very eclectic in their musical offering. From their raw beginnings in pure black metal, to the powerful electronic hybrids of the latter, and reaching the avant-garde schizophrenia of two very different albums like Generator, Psychogrotesque, and Dirty, through a musical journey that has always combined stylistic innovation and a desire to dare.

The band's past belongs to the darkest, most occult, most brutal extreme metal. But here on SHIFTING.negative, these sounds are almost completely abandoned; the latest transformation of Aborym is radical: a new line-up, but mostly a new sound, a new way of conveying their message.

And while it is likely that these changes will cause quite a few stomachaches among the band's most "metal" fans, those who appreciate the more changing and mutable side of their music will be pleasantly surprised.

Despite the overall lightening of the music and its catchy character, it should be said that SHIFTING.negative is, without a doubt, the most experimental chapter of the Aborym saga since Fire Walk With Us and With No Human Intervention.

It's true, the rhythms are significantly less frantic compared to those two crazy and hallucinated monoliths respectively in 2001 and 2003, but what immediately jumps out upon listening to this new album is its vivid technological under-layer. A relentless industrial grayness, rich in sharp sounds and electro parts, with production and instrumental work resulting in a perfectly organic outcome. Because complementing the work offered by electronics, synths, and digital, are the guitars. Farewell to the last black metal remnants... these are Aborym embracing genres like punk and hard rock, where guitar fury plays with electricity and vice versa, in a constant exchange of solos, blast beats, and synthetic pulses with a nuclear flavor.

But what strikes the writer, regardless of the significant stylistic changes, is that Aborym still possess a particular characteristic. A trademark, a quality they've carried with them since the distant Kali-Yuga Bizarre and that, in an impressive way, persists even on SHIFTING.negative.

If there is something unique that every Aborym album possesses, it's that strange negative aura, a mix of anxiety, fear, and paranoia. As if their music were nothing more than the soundtrack, album after album, of a dystopian future of a world destined to fall apart. Take "For a Better Past", "Tragedies for Sale", or "Decadence in a Nutshell", and especially the beautiful "Precarious", as examples. Chills from the first listen, in an emotional sonic crescendo created by machines, yet still strongly human. A terribly energetic industrial rock, a calculated rise and fall of metallic onslaughts, acidic and hysterical voices, and black pits of robotic darkness, where the artificial replaces the natural and the purest melody is irreversibly polluted.

Numerous guests and collaborators, as is tradition. From Sin Quirin of Ministry, to Davide Tiso of the lamented Ephel Duath, from Ricktor Ravensbrück of Electric Hellfire Club, to Pier Marzano of Koza Noztra, and many others, with the wise post-production of a sacred monster like Guido Elmi chiseling a new, excellent, work for Fabban and associates. A small masterpiece of destabilizing and multiform music, for a band that, despite changing its skin, has not lost an ounce of aggression and intent by once again combining experimentation and intransigence.