Dystopia Nå
Syklus

"The real struggle will be in your head..."

With these words echoing in his mind, I. ventures trembling through the narrow, icy paths of the orbiting station, a veritable floating citadel in deep space. Just a few hours earlier, he had awakened trapped in a straitjacket, managed to escape the assault of countless revolting creatures, which moments before were people like him, and had begun his personal quest. A quest for what, exactly? He didn't even know. In his head, only images of N., flashbacks and hallucinations tormented him, guilt for having let his girlfriend die (or so he believed) without lifting a finger, without preventing her suicide.

I. staggers, with every step taking the lives of people, perhaps even acquaintances, who now have nothing "living" or human left; each step seems stained not so much with their blood, but with N.'s, which like a cancer in his brain increasingly obsesses him. In his images, even she is no longer human: her pale face is sunken and stained with dried blood, her beautiful eyes have disappeared, replaced by a blinding spectral glow; her voice, the force that pushed him forward (at least until her tragic suicide), has transformed into a chilling, threatening whisper. The corridors, windows, rooms, and walls of the orbiting station are scattered with blood, human limbs, corpses, and mutilated bodies; the nursery has lost its reassuring smell it always had, replaced by an unbearable stench of death, and the cries and wails of children are now the shrill calls of creatures ready to kill if only you miss your aim and don't swiftly end their existence. And then the sudden noises, the agonizing screams, the desperation that leads him to trust people he would never have wagered on at other times... And human madness, once again incarnated in a sect that, with its followers, has cursed this colony by spreading the seed of madness and greenlighting the genetic mutations that, in fact, have generated the monsters that I. is taking down one by one. And when, at last, he manages to reconcile with himself and his nightmares, when he believes he has managed to apologize to the specter of his lost love, thus granting her eternal peace, when he hopes that the hallucinations are over, the cancer in his brain re-emerges stronger than before: the seed of madness, materialized in the form of the memory of N., has infected him too. The disease must be eradicated, and it will be incredibly painful, more so than any other wound inflicted during the grueling battle that brought him to this point. And when everything finally concludes, I. will still be alive, but inside him, a memory will have been definitively annihilated, replaced by a void, a "dead space" perhaps never to be filled again.

"Syklus," the debut of the Norwegians Dystopia Nå, is an album difficult to categorize. The band combines (post) black metal moments with progressions bordering on post-metal, also allowing themselves almost doom-like slowdowns counterbalanced by ambient and noise parentheses that evoke futuristic scenarios of aseptic metropolitan spaces. Listening to their eight tracks brings to mind Lifelover, Solstafir, and Katatonia (from "Discouraged Ones" onwards), but references to other bands abound. The average quality is good, with excellent points on one hand and less incisive tracks on the other, but in general, the Norwegian combo manages to be appreciated right from the first listen, though I doubt it can endure in your stereos over the long run; however, it seems to be driven by a certain underlying elusiveness that, in fact, could turn out to be the spring that ensures the album more extended and lasting listens.

Rating rounded up, on trust.