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Rating:
Many times when reading an album review (and here I refer to DeB and our colleagues on TrueMetal), we listen to the reviewer who tells us the history of the album, anecdotes, historical importance, what he had for breakfast this morning and so on.
In short, they tell us everything, except how this record "feels on the skin." Well... I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's not easy at all to convey what this record represents
Yes, because you must know that imagining the sound of this album for someone who has never listened to it is like trying to explain the difference between red and blue to someone who has been blind from birth.
Even determining the genre is a serious problem: at the time (1987) the term "avant-garde metal" was coined, fully deserved: indeed, "Into the Pandemonium" stands to music as Warhol's madness stands to art.
However, it's easier to simply define it as "extreme metal", because this record is extreme in everything, atmosphere, musical complexity, harshness in a broad sense, innovativeness, in short in any way that "extreme" can mean.
I try to summarize: "Into The Pandemonium" is an Opera. A magnificent work that ranges from the purest metal to the most hallucinated and twisted psychedelia. In this fundamental chapter, Tom G. Warrior & Co show a level of expressive quality achieved by few until then. They play to broaden the horizons of musical extremism, and in a scene where playing at the limit too often meant offering a linear, flat, monotonous thrash (see Possessed, Venom).
It's a record that is even adverse to the listener, which tries in every way to distract them from their attempt to understand it. No one, and I mean no one, ever had a great impression on the first listen: generally torn between disappointment and an undefined sensation of "strangeness" of the record, rather than true value, only the minority who continued to listen to it more and more times assimilated it for what it is, namely a masterpiece.
The riffs tend to have little symmetry, the notes appear disordered, not responding to any rational organization of melody, the impression is of total passionate abandonment by those who composed. Naturally, it's just an impression, because to overcome the initial aversion the attention to compositional detail must be triple compared to works with more conventional structures. Thus, a free rein to lopsided drum riffs, tons of tempo changes, strange rhythms, bars played at sometimes unnatural speeds, so much so that they appear restless rather than powerful, countertimes and inclusion of normally unused sounds.
Want an example? Listen to the track "One In Their Pride". An electronic drum set halfway between house and dance, sharp and clumsy violins, and a sampled voice obsessively repeating the song title. And they have already created an atmosphere of paranoia, which has rarely been reached at that level in metal.
To leave for posterity.
"I don't care if we are the heaviest or the lightest, the most commercial or the most poser band.
We try to be different, to be something new.”
Tom G. Warrior, 1986
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Mexican Radio (03:29)
Mexican Radio
written by Wall of Voodoo, from their album Call of the West
I feel a hot wind on my shoulder
And the touch of a world that is older
I turn the switch and check the number
I leave it on when in bed I slumber
I hear the rhythms of the music
I buy the product but never use it
I hear the talking of the DJ
Can't understand - just what does he say?
I'm on the Mexican radio
I'm on the Mexican (whoa ho) radio
(Radio DJ speaking in Spanish)
I dial it in and tune the station
They talk about the U.S. inflation
I understand just a little
No comprende - it's a riddle
I'm on the Mexican radio
I'm on the Mexican (whoa ho) radio
I'm on the Mexican radio
I'm on the Mexican (whoa ho) radio
(Radio DJ speaking in Spanish)
I wish I was in Tijuana -
Eating barbecued iguana
I'd take requests on the telephone
I'm on a wavelength far from home
I feel the hot wind on my shoulder
I dial it in from south of the border
I hear the talking of the DJ -
Can't understand - just what does he say?
I'm on the Mexican radio
I'm on the Mexican (whoa ho) radio
I'm on the Mexican radio
I'm on the Mexican (whoa ho) radio
Radio, Radio
Radio, Radio
Radio, Radio
Radio, Radio
I'm on the Mexican radio
I'm on the Mexican (whoa ho) radio
I'm on the Mexican radio
I'm on the Mexican (whoa ho) radio ...
Radio
Radio
What does he say?
Radio
Radio
Radio
02 Mesmerized (03:24)
You, who like the moon at night
Haunted my mortal heart ...
You who made this ancient walls
Shine like divine marble
The unwanted breath - through creedence
A derelict shell in the desert
- Mesmerised -
As love inflamed the night
Burning tongues brought the rain
The sand remained - purified
Murmur at the meager's spear
Battered Carthagian pride
The beloved cry - wasted dismay
Invasion of baseness and shade
You, loved by your father
Innocent as a vestal - dove
Buried in a deep blue sea
As we all lose - ever
03 Inner Sanctum (05:16)
Sleep brings no joy to me
Remembrance never dies
My soul is given to misery
And lives in sighs ...
The shadows of the dead,
My waken eyes may never see,
Surround my bed
That from which they sprung - eternity
Beneath the turf
The silent dead
Sleep brings no wish to knit
My harrassed heart beneath
My only wish is to forget
In the sleep of death
Death is my joy
I long to be at rest
I wish the damp earth covered
This desolate brest
Beneath the mould
The silent dead
But the glad eyes around us
Must weep as we have done
And we must see the same gloom
Eclipse their morning sun
Oh not for them - Should we despair
The grave is drear - But they're not there
Their dust is mingled - With the sod
Their pale souls - Are gone, to god
Well, may they live in ecstasy
Their long eternity of joy
At least I wouldn't bring them down
With me to weep, to groan
And what's the future
A sea beneath the cloudless sun
A mighty, glorious, dazzling sea
Stretching into infinity
My inner sanctum
R.I.P
04 Sorrows of the Moon (03:04)
This evening the moon dreams more lazily
As some fair woman, lost in cushions deep
With gentle hand caresses listlessly
The contour of her breasts before she sleeps
On velvet backs of avalanches soft
She often lies enraptured as she dies
And gazes on white visions aloft
Which like a blossoming to heaven rise
When sometimes on this globe, in indolence
She lets a secret tear drop down, by chance
A poet, set against oblivion
Takes in his hand this pale and furtive tear
This opal drop where rainbow hues appear
And hides it in his breast far from the sun
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Other reviews
By ElectricOne
"Into The Pandemonium represents the compositional zenith of the band led by T.G. 'Warrior' Fischer and Martin Eric Ain."
"A truly historic and seminal album, absolutely anomalous for the global metal landscape of the time and still original and innovative."
By Rocky Marciano
"The most avant-garde metal album that will ever be made."
"No album has ever lived up to its name as this 'Into The Pandemonium', into the pandemonium!"
