Impure Domain
H.I.V.: Parade

H.I.V.: Parade by the Apulian band IMPURE DOMAIN is a masterpiece of Italian avant-garde metal.

Hidden in the undergrowth of Italian underground, Impure Domain was born in 1998. After debuting in 2000 with “Progression Of Impurity” (a full-length quite rare to find nowadays), embracing the style of a fierce and untainted Black Metal, they decided two years later to dare and experiment, thus creating “Vivere Di Male/The Evil Within”, an embryonic gem that introduced influences from the most violent Electronics, Death Metal, and Noise Music into their music.

The decisive step, however, is made with H.I.V.: Parade. Released in 2004, this album consists of 14 pearls of exquisite genius, where the most visceral Extreme Metal embraces numerous influences. By doing without a drummer and replacing him with a ferocious and machine-gunning Drum Machine, Impure Domain give rise to an album so full of sounds, dissonances, and experiments at the edge of the maniacal that during listening, you find yourself catapulted into a journey through black holes, among the most remote galaxies. The snare beats shot like this serve as the tireless engine of an album that, although multi-contaminated, results in a sonic monolith so unassailable and so uniform that even a single listen is enough to be overwhelmed by a rain of dense and static electricity that will progressively leave you electrified.

The bone-crushing advance of this group of 14 furious cyborgs boasts an arsenal that, Italians except for foreign enthusiasts, could battle with eyes closed against well more renowned European acts. Because indeed, the strong points of this album are many and significant. Starting with the vocalist Angy's voice, a versatile throat that growls in many different ways and is adept at narrating and reciting the various segments of the album, intertwining moreover, at certain moments, with female voices; the instrumentalists, Mikheil, Xhela, and Psykoblaster, talented and effective in attacking our tympanic membranes with technical skills, thrash rhythms, tremolo picking hurricanes in pure Black style, and vitriolic solos; the lyrics utterly faithful to the most twisted and harsh nihilism passing through Celine and Cioran; the use of intelligent techniques for the narration of the album such as the cut-up by William Burroughs, which consists of cutting sections of text, binding them without logical thread, and at the same time giving them a new (and twisted in the case of Impure Domain) meaning. All supported by a chilling production that contributes to making the musical proposal of the Italian combo even more mechanical.

The first synthetic wingbeat is given by the electronic “R.N.A.: The Triumvirate”, a spit in the face of the most conservative blacksters, a godsend for those (like me) who reject barriers in music. It is followed by the triptych “Nihilistik”, “Diable Deluxe Vs. Gaz Inchristique”, “ Scanners Ov System_Gott”, three sharp scales that embed themselves in our synapses and contaminate them with strikes of Gabber Techno beats, robotic/screaming/guttural vocals, spectral synths, and riffs initially precise and compact, and gradually increasingly deviant and sick; the futuristic atmospheres that Impure Domain manage to compose send shivers, assimilating disparate influences but not emulating the champions of the genre, and rather resulting in a new and surprising, yet unfortunately underrated, reality. “Orbital Betrayal” lets us breathe a bit, if it weren’t for the fact that what we breathe are polluted petroleum fumes. Polluted petroleum fumes that drag us to the middle of the album where the instrumental “Martyrdom Capsule” showcases the absolute creativity of these musicians and the ability to create pathos with a genre so challenging and hard to assimilate.

Again, “Lasertron Rebellion”, powerful and clattering like a Tiger I panzer, shocks us with continuous time changes bathed in flows of lava Death Metal and practically fantastic innovations like the finale in which Angy with his voice does everything. We find ourselves again inside a rave in hell with “Visionoir of The Grotesque”, where a martial Drum Machine marries placid and dreamy synths that increasingly destabilize the negative atmosphere of the album, and add an even more malignant touch always dictated by the singer’s extraordinary performance. We go back to striking with “Biotech 8”, linked by the brief and industrial “Weirdoutovhand” to the pounding “Kaos Mit Uns”, bringing us closer to the final part of the album, the most intense and experimental, the last meteorite shower before the most absolute void. An electronic and increasingly eclectic shower deconstructed in three tracks: “Digitform Cephalgia: Stuffed Cranium Lab.”, “The Endmost Pitch”, and the long and hypnotic “Mistrial”. There is no track better than the others, no dip, no filler.

H.I.V.: Parade should be taken as it is, a burning cosmic journey into artificial apocalypse where machines have deprogrammed and destroyed the human race, and this album is its worthy soundtrack. Hyper recommended for the more open-minded and those who love the most experimental and avant-garde extreme music. And still for those who want to know and support with discernment the most underground Italian music. 

DIGITAL MASSACRE