Review Summary: Fleurety have released yet another piece of pure incoherence
I don't know about you, but Fluerety has always striked me as, well, odd. Ever since their 1993 demo "Black Snow", I've been scratching my head in confusion as to what founders Alexander Nordgaren and Svein Egil Hatlevik were thinking allowing their outlandish musical endeavors to be professionally released. The duo from Norway have gradually changed their sound from album to album. They started as an Inherent Black Metal band but slowly started diverging into a more Avant-garde, Progressive sound.
Sounds interesting enough on paper, but Fleurety have once again utterly failed to arrange anything worth listening to.
Department of Apocalyptic Affair is the new effort from Fluerety, and calling it Avant-garde is a total understatement. If it's not for the random, out of place keyboard interludes, the incredibly underwhelming stagnant vocal delivery, and one of THE most arid drumming performances to date, then it's got to be the name of the album. Department of Apocalyptic Affairs, it sounds like the name of some Stephen King book or something. From what I can gather, this is a concept album. All the songs seemingly tie together about an apocalyptic department full of incompetent detectives that take on cases involving apocalyptic affairs. It doesn't make sense to me either, and to further back that up, here's and excerpt from the song "Face in a Fever".
i've seen the one-track mind
however just in profile
he keeps a shocking feast
leads his women to anxieties and sweets
he is the iguana man
always this repulsive
always accompanied by screams
he spits the virus at the one who sleeps
Yeah, that's just a taste of what you'll get lyrically from Department of Apocalyptic Affairs. Lyrics so bane of actual meaning and sense that you start to wonder if the whole album was entirely drug induced.
Clocking in at about 50 minutes, you will literally start to beg for this album to end. There are times in this album where songs can just drag on forever. This is partly due to the drumming effort presented here. Throughout each track, Svein shows no clear ability that he's at least a decent drummer. There is no technicality, hardly any fills, no speed involved whatsoever, and every song constantly just follows the same drum pattern. The vocal performance is something to marvel at on DOAA. Svein exhibits a very dull Black Metal attempt and has absolutely no range or power, his voice pretty much stays entirely on the same pitch and tempo throughout. Another aspect of DOAA that makes me cringe are the eccentric keyboard solos and sections that just don't belong at all in the mix. They are usually off time and come just out of nowhere and do not lend a helping hand in keeping this album at least somewhat musically stable. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, Svein handles the drumming, vocals, and the keyboards. The guitar work showcased by Alexander is the only slightly decent and redeeming factor that's noticeable on DOAA, and in the end, that's not saying much.
Department of Apocalyptic Affairs is very very bad.Though upon first hearing this and finding it merely comical, it gets old quickly and loses it's novelty within about a minute. I do not recommend this to anyone, unless of course your a sucker for cheap laughs.
Standout Tracks:
None
