Resuscitator
Iniciation

This is a period where I'm writing without any pathetic pretense because it's a period where I listen to music to not think. So, I grind through everything, especially on the highway. I adjust my listening to the damn distance I have to cover: when I have to grind more than 300 km during the day, I listen to rock, like Sambora who I just reviewed; when I have to grind a few (always during the day), I go for brutal or electrifying sounds (the other day I managed to mix Pretty Boy Floyd and Napalm Death). Nighttime is always a matter of distances influenced by the level of sleepiness: <300 km, I go for gothic rock, >300 km is medieval warfare.

This period that has cooled me down in every sense (and my hypochondria must be making producers of various nasal decongestants and medicines starting with the root tachi- very happy… by the way, do they cause tachycardia?) started more or less with the sumptuous opening of the southern winter: 25°C on December 23rd. While everyone is out shopping for gifts, covered in second layers of brownish skin, festive, bundled up, and so on, I find myself sweating in the city streets and quite sad. So sad that I decide to enter a record store going through its transition phase towards selling musical instruments. Basically, there's still a lot of stuff but it's all running out of stock.

I don't know why that day I decided to enrich my notable discography with additional original pieces (buy original music, damn it!). Among naisinceneils, enrichebunburi, and various eirmetal, I immediately spot and associate it with the price: 5 euros. Worst case scenario (and I was sure it would go badly), I’ll gift it for Christmas!!!

Anyway, what I've written so far is pure nothingness, but it wasn't premeditated. The review starts here. Without wanting to criticize anyone in the slightest and in the most absolute way (on the contrary!), when I got home, I found in my ears that typical music product that many masters of raw/extreme/ultrasatanicblack reviews could, purely theoretically, have elevated to the rank of a secondary work but of undeniable dark/mortuary/flagellant value.

I want to be clear, because I’ve listened with the detachment of recent times even to this thing here, which honestly deserves a solid 3, as the (self-)sufficient crap it is, which, however, in some respects could have earned 4/5 stars from others in a moment of prolific analysis.

What is this Iniciation? It is the first full-length album by a Californian band that has been frequenting the extreme shores of metal since the early 90s. But, to crap out this album, they needed 1993.

It’s a perfect evil cocktail: 4 parts doom, 3 parts death, 3 parts black (then, logically, after vomit).

Let's start with the production. Dirty enough to make it a niche album or evolved for those times? The release date, 1993, and the anonymity of the production house convinced me that we are nevertheless facing a remarkable sound and certainly noteworthy.

The album lasts a mere 28 minutes and change. And perhaps it would last nothing even in the memory of many (who are not the reviewers mentioned before) if it weren't for the fact that it kind of tricked me for the following reasons: 1) the voice: the scream/growl repertoire is covered in many facets, and all types of braying have a common denominator: they come from end-stage lungs, full of pus, and pass through tracheas full of fistulas and the egg stores of the worst insects. There have been plenty of voices like this, but these are disgusting enough. 2) the overall sound: vocals, guitar, bass, and drums for three components capable of giving life and death to putrid notes, decaying, 3) the total ignorance of some musical moments mixed with the calculated coldness of other parts that doesn’t clash and still shows that the band basically knows how to play, 4) one particular track, number 3 (out of 6 total) titled "Black Funeral", which starts with a slow and hypnotic riff and gets wrapped up for a long time and still has a good impact.

The track by track is rendered unnecessary because it's difficult to say more than what's been said. The overall atmosphere that rises damp and rotten from the CD tracks is more or less what I've described. The doom parts are well done, the black (don’t expect Dimmu Borgir here, maybe there’s some raw hint, like Beherit, who knows) as well. On the death side, I seem to say that the cymbals have an unpleasant dominance over the snares, and so there’s a bit of a mess that still makes the album more badass and evil. What's missing? Ah, the songwriting. The only theme this group deals with is Satan, with continuous invocations and promises of sacrifice. It seems like a Satanism (get thee behind me, Saragat!) not just for show and still deeply occultist. Certainly ignorant and foolish. If they sang in Italian, I think many wouldn't listen. Maybe for this reason, Resuscitator could have become a leading group for determined miscreants. But it's fine like this, it's fine for them to be relegated to a second or third-tier group down in California. Something that certainly makes them an unusual group in the land of glamsters, thrashers, and so forth. And maybe for this reason more fascinating (here I've smashed myself  a sour tomato in the face): it’s slimy music distant anyway from the canons of classic American death moving between Morbid Angel and Deicide, but very American in many ways and somewhat European too. And then, overall, it also has a Mexican narco-malice feel. In conclusion, I realize I might have confused you, but if you're intrigued by bands with Nazigothic font logos, multiple upside-down crosses, and covers with pseudo-medieval kitsch featuring a minotaur with a goat's head instead of a bull’s, with everyone kneeling before it laden with gifts like it’s an Epiphany, you might try listening to this sonic infection.

For lovers of the genre. And only.