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A twelve-year-old goes to the record store and asks for the freshly re-released "Masters Of Reality" by Sabbath at a nice price; the shrewd shopkeeper, not having it in stock, and calculating that a twelve-year-old is generally musically naive, offers (or forces upon, as you like) him the best-selling metal album of the time.
The twelve-year-old returns home and, after putting the small portable stereo to an unbearable test for almost an hour, unable to distinguish even a sound, curses the shopkeeper, abandons the CD, and vows to change stores.
Three years pass, and the fifteen-year-old throws a house party; after a while, he leaves the stereo (this one truly worthy of its name and not portable) and tells his metalhead friend to take care of it. After a while, a record starts playing, and the fifteen-year-old thinks the metalhead friend brought his treasures from home and enjoys a great CD. The party ends, and our hero asks his friend for the name of the band and the CD he played at the beginning, only to receive a "BOOH, if you don't know it's yours, imagine how much I know." So the fifteen-year-old realizes that at twelve he didn't understand a damn thing about music, listens to the CD for months and frequently returns to the shrewd shopkeeper.
Now the fifteen-year-old is nineteen and continues to listen to that CD, which has features rarely found in other works.
Extremely intricate rhythms subject to continuous changes of speed, (while always keeping it very high) the "soloist" (Fredrik Thorendal, the band's mastermind) delights us with very sharp but never misplaced distortions, and managing to insert jazz-fusion solos in various pieces ("Sublevels", the most contaminated), which sounds like a mussel in ricotta tortellini, but is the cherry on top, bassist (Peter Nordin) who can also "steer the ship" ("Beneath"), drummer-secondary voice (Jens Kidman) with an "easy" double pedal, and logically a singer with an animalistic growl.
This album has a bit of everything, from 80s B.Area Thrash ("Future Breed Machine"), more monolithic and articulated tracks ("Soul Burn", with an incredibly intricate ending), pieces like "Inside What's Within Behind", which recalls F. Factory, but after 15 years of technical schooling, melodic arpeggios (Marten Hagstrom in "Acrid Placidity").
I've seen it multiple times among the 10 best metal albums of all time on various sites and magazines, surely the band's masterpiece.
On Halloween day, I can't think of a more fitting album.
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Future Breed Machine (05:48)
an even stobe a pulse of flashing
hatelights of synthetic souls massproduced
hammered to shaped a sign of times dreams
turn into systems a new way a new breed
implanted in our minds
here i am in the hand of a sterile hate the
new control i can not wake i'm not a sleep
new intelligence arise in emptied bodies
turgid flesh tested through eternal spastic
fits through not known codes mother
machine in genocide now scorn a dying race
evolution in reverse now it's time for me
changing what am i to be contorted an
eternity defeated
programmed to appease you we're symbols of
perfection humanoids runed by your laws :
destroy erase improve lesson first :
submission we're docile servant dogs our
leashes are your limbs computed deep
within
remoted minds controlled our thoughts no
more doubts the new way is here disgorged
another thousands fakes that obey to a
circuit skein to vacuum
mechanical thoughts i now concieve no
longer me always to see inanity millions
to be units like me eternally human
patterns copied dissected distorted
completed to fit the machine the nerve
fibres give in to cords to the unknown
see me be me same contents same machine
the currency of ours no more flesh and bone
we are to unaware of what we have been
before
evolution in reverse now it's time for me
changing what am i to be contorted an
eternity defeated by the new machine
02 Beneath (05:38)
It's time to go into the me below
My morbid self beneath
A peril trip the last way out
I spin as I let go
In spirals down the narrow lines
Passing through my aura
Spit me out into my mind
A journey through disease
I'm behind my cynic eyes
That stare but can not see
The sickness in me... Beneath
I fall in untruthful me the essence of my thoughts
Swirling in a thousand vows endless truthless
What am I this me beneath
A vain organic lie
That rules me from inside
Immobile now I bow before reality itself
It's substance moving through my eyes
My life is transferred once suffused upon
My mind the view erases burns inside
And then another fall
I plunge into a well of lies a cold
Perennial flow the vortex of my soul
03 Soul Burn (05:17)
inner perception trapped in a soul cage
human wreckage i leave my liquid face
who am i sense blurred who's my mind
in this life obscured
visual progressions leave me no peace
subliminal merger clutch the
fence of needs
what's there in desperation what's real
flawless confusion
void of emptyness reign my truth
before my eyes flashes of youth
memory-nuances pass where's my life
frayed pictures mass
insidious deception feelings fade
reenous mirrors i praise the
blackened day
what am i to reality what's in line
subsequently
forever turning through a lifetime
endless burning of soul and mind
step by step i'm taken through the past
to burn in fear of lies i'm lost mouldering
oblivions grasp makes my soul burn
burn
this astray mind has sieged my soul
forever chained to this tearing cold
i'll never tell the truth from lies
disbelief covers my eyes i'm lost mouldering
perpetual pain in this soul burn
pieces to me strange wrapped up disguise
reflections of myself in another life
i see it vague before my eyes
pictures drawn of naked bare lies
it makes no sense to live this mess
constant until i find my rest
enemy within a soul in flames
gaining it's pulse breeding inside
pressure increase drowns my belief
as i unveil myself in me
burn
04 Transfixion (03:33)
trapped in a gaze where time stand still
connected to a blur sensations deformed
we are to drown just to become
another set of eyes among the millions
enchanted we fade selecting illusions
dwellers of the scene a new world obsessed
gods of displays divine screens
radiate us now your blessing
down kneel to shields of glass
to the sovereign
bleed for the entity of wavelenghts
transfixed yet eyes glowing with delight
delusions of omniscience bred us by liars
mentally drained by the growing leech
fed on our manic desire
oceans of sewage continual
washing into our minds
drowning in wasted integrity
with eyes too open to see vanity
engulfed in super fiction fields
what are we when the false pictures
dissolve
caged within a twilight world
devoid of own self made thoughts
stare blind ...
05 Vanished (05:04)
Convalescent livid we succumb
Stagnation now complete
This is the new plague called
Unconsciousness
We're selfcaged in defeat
Clotted minds coagulate we are trapped
Inside the tears we obey resignate to our
Self-inflected fears
Voices calm will be never heard
In this mode who will change
Bantised in our minds so absurd
Is this the world sublime
Into pools of paranoia we're fading with
Reality drained by lies we are al inhuman
Introspective vanishing
Sterile thoughts now upraised in subhuman
Majesty bodies numb still enchained
Where am I in hell of our dreams
Wrong wrong I'm in the now the vain reality
So it seems we're dying yet content
Worship our chrysalis stage since when are
Lies devine
Since when
This is now degrade indulge
This is us servile obliging
Swallowed by our hunger for mendacity
As this dance whirls deeper into hate
We're vanishing
In down deep cold where am I caught cage
Trapped not in dreams now time has killed
Our eyes fall fade gone dead away
07 Inside What's Within Behind (04:30)
i can't run away from this thing in me
i'm weakening down another now developing
within
i can feel it it's inside my head
connected to my brain this other me is
slowly taking over deep beneath the
eye that
all can see energic visions of the one
i know myself to be
look into my eyes don't listen to their lies
how can i stop this from being real
no my life will be no longer what it always
used to be
life neglected infected by strain
i fall into the smothering the even
flow of
ravaging pain this my temple of selfcaged
contempt a body slowly pierced by
inevitable me
do i differ from yourself am i like
they say
the truth eventually i'm the one you
wanna be
can you feel the same as i another inside
pushing to free itself from the chains
of the soul
turn your eyes toward the inside
dig deep within i'm sure you'll find
a different self a different soul
to put you in peace with mind
08 Terminal Illusions (03:47)
i don't need religion
god bless no one
me and my own opinions
are written by me
you surrender
under mass hypnosis
bound to illusions
produced by your god
who is humane
real alive no god
i see your blindness
erase your identity
your mind is hollow
carved to inability
i know to be
loyal to myself
my integrity leaves myself
alone in peace with me
god
there's no god
life is a trap
unlock your mind
trust in yourself
wake from the grip of the tongue
you've been choked oppressed
god owns god cheats god lies
god hates god kills god slays
the pressure on humanity
has risen beyond control
we are leading evolution
into termination
the sense of hate
inbreeding scars to innocence
genetic prejudice a
selfdestructive line in pain
why this reality
life poured into inanity
09 Suffer in Truth (04:20)
tortured soul ripping skin into ashes
blind by pain deaf by lies
smell of freedom violently cuts
forgiveness
power to a being never dies
suffer in truth's narrow passage saw
weak solutions stabbed to now know
the smile of obliterations face
penetrating through the void of life
a dance with the dead
buried in oblivion stolen from the mind
constant starving never fed
contamined life is fading
laughing in my face
suffer in deception
manipulated not to feel
slain beleifs abandoned dreams
a life of misery
suffer in truth
the wounds of a soul in pain
a mirror of life
dreams all in vain
life will always be sealed
i see ... unseen
i feel ... unseen
suffer in truth
10 Sublevels (05:14)
back again within myself
asleep but aware i'm lost again
every time i close my eyes
i enter the dream to which i'm strained
a sudden change into a state
where life is dust
and everything flow
circling above swirling seas
of eyes upraised toward the unknown
vapour masques in the leaden air
unleashed by death in a grubby dawn
vacant faces reflecting sorrow
hidden inside senses disowned
a maze of glass shattered by thoughts
of a faltered soul freed in bliss
clouds disperse revealing shades
tempting my soul i can't resist
a vision of morbidity
of ragged silent shadows
dressed in black disease
they're closing up on me
peering lifeless weary eyes
they drag me down into
another world inside of me
paralyzed by the view
hypnotized let me wake
mesmerized by the flames as i return
into myself a slow conversion a silent
change i wake into the brightened day
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