Review Summary: If you thought the last Krallice album was hard to get through, try THIS baby.
The name of the game for Mick Barr seems to be inaccessibility. Throughout his career, he’s written stuff that almost sounds like he doesn’t WANT anybody to get it. He pushed avant garde metal driven to new, unmistakable heights that were unthinkably complex but were also nigh inaccessible. He takes this feeling of experimental songwriting to new levels with his pitchfork-acclaimed black metal group Krallice. Most black metal bands use rinky dink production techniques to make out this foggy atmosphere, what Krallice attempts to do is create this atmosphere without that barren atmosphere while still hailing old black metal. On their self-titled debut, the group was successful in a sense, they created this sound and cooked it to a crisp, but almost over-dosed the listener on it. It was too much of a good thing so to speak. For better or for worse,
Dimensional Bleethrough is a LOT more of the same.
Where the last album was six tracks totaling to over sixty minutes of black metal at its most math rock-ish,
Dimensional Bleedthrough is seven tracks totaling exactly seventy-seven minutes. Now, while this may sound utterly ridiculous to most, Krallice makes this bloated mess sound monolithic and enthralling. The tremolo riffs sort of bleed into each other, to where it feels like you’re listening to an experience rather than an album. Buzzing waves of riffs cutting and intertwining into each other, fusing into this hollow, cold atmosphere to which most black metal desires to be. Mickie Barr’s continual assault leaves little to no relaxation for the listener, just wrapping your head around cluttering black metal riffs and hollowing screeches from his voice. This is futuristic black metal.
The main point of all this music is for Mick Barr himself. He’s very pretentious, and that makes his music pretentious, and ultimately that’s the fatal strength and flaw of this record. There’s a lot to chew through this record, and it’s samey throughout. Same jolted, twiddle meets tremolo style riffing, same hails to black metal spread and mixed with in each song, and ultimately it’s a choice of whether not you can handle that much of the same material. Yes, it’s extremely repetitive, and yes it’s exuberantly pretentious, but ultimately, it’s a strong piece of work that is just too much for a listener to get down in a single listen. Whether or not one should really brave into this world is their choice, but it would take someone brave to fork the whole thing down in one bite. I know I couldn’t.
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