Thee Maldoror Kollective
New Era Viral Order

PILLS OF BLACK DEVELOPMENT  (episode III)

Things happen that move us. They amaze us, frighten us, confuse us. We are left astonished, speechless. Then, as if the intellect comes after emotion, we try to reason. In other words, we become responsible (like Scilipoti, just to understand), capable of responding to what offends us, contradicts us, comforts us, cooling passion and ideological involvement.

Initially driven by purely Black symphonic schemes (but with an already hinted apocalyptic and shamanic aura), Thee Maldoror Kollective from Turin have managed to evolve into something more fascinating and cybernetic than the ''true-Norwegian-style'', adding to their arsenal electronic scores, ambient corridors, and trance-based industrial sounds. The result? A hyper-tense and terrifying sound, incredibly difficult to label: Electro-Industrial-Noise-Dark-Black metal...does it fit? Ah...and with some marked Thrash overtones.

No, we are no longer talking about the simple Verse/Bridge/Chorus/Verse scheme...   For ''New Era Viral Order'' it doesn’t work that way. The standard song model is completely subverted, transforming into a demon that crawls under the skin and reaches the brain, annihilating it with all its thundering hatred.

Glacial, dark, depressing, persecutory, malignant atmospheres. All amalgamated into a huge cauldron of massive electronics and served still hot for our listening pleasure. Hypnotic and schizophrenic riffs give life to a mad and murderous creature: try to remain insensitive to listening to real sound assaults like ''Xaos DNA Released'' (when, completely out of your psychic control, you too will be forced to scream at the end of the piece ''Chaos...Chaos'') or the subsequent ''Haemorrage Transmission''.

Nevertheless, it is with the thousand perverse facets of the tracks more inclined to experimentation that the zenith of black light is reached; in this sense, listening to ''Drain-Wound-Cosmosis'' or ''La Flamme Vivant'' (both Industrial/Ambient frescoes on the verge of EBM) but also the schizoid ''Rigid Pulse Startfire'' is as intoxicating as ever. Personally, I find it an apt and tasteful choice to highlight in the mixing phase the sound of the bass (rarely heard so well-defined) and especially to integrate a drum machine with the ''human'' drum parts, making them fully blendable but, at the same time, distinctly recognizable, as if to create two parallel and distinct components: the biological part of man and the electronic part of the machine. A bond in which the latter seems more human and less rational than man himself.

Experimenting, in this case, becomes a tool to achieve a precise goal, namely the creation of typical Black scene feelings revisited in a completely new way. Here Black metal is present more on a conceptual level than a material one, as it gets pulverized by a clear coldness, an icy hatred, a destabilizing rancor. 

Does the essence of evil, individualism, the black verb reside exclusively in the clownish face-painting of many similar-satanic bands wielding war axes and knives? Listen to ''New Era Viral Order'' and try to answer. You will find yourself, without even realizing it, in the midst of a nightmare that will drag you into the sickest recesses of your mind.