Psyclon Nine
Crwn Thy Frnicatr

4.5
superb

Review

by MrMarketingDirector USER (2 Reviews)
July 6th, 2011 | 22 replies

Release Date: 2006 | Tracklist

Review Summary: This is what Hell sounds like.

Psyclon Nine sounds preposterously dark and hideously evil. Well, at least they try to, depending upon your point of view. Let's get that out of the way from the beginning.

The band began playing fairly typical aggrotech but for the vocals (we'll talk about them later). This is not the case with "Crwn Thy Frnicatr", and the result is that much more unique and, well, evil. This is no longer typical aggrotech; instead, copious amounts of black metal have been added in to flavor the sound. This is not, however, done in an abrasive (well, abrasive in a bad way) method---rather, the guitars and blast beats flavor the demonic choir and symphonic disconcordia. Over this sonic cavalcade are the main vocals---a high, distorted shriek that sounds, for better or for worse, like a hawk getting its soul ripped out through its eye sockets.

The vocals are actually so grating that they solely might turn off many potential listeners. However, after listening to a few songs, they begin to blend into the music and---eventually---it becomes difficult to fathom any other vocal style complementing this music as well as the ones that Nero Bellum uses with such arguable finesse. The guitars and drums are nothing special; they are there, they don't shine, and they aren't meant to. The same is to be said of the synths---while they are confident and strong, they do not shine, and never make the song in and of themselves. The effects and noises that permeate every track are more immediately noticeable than the synths or guitars, especially in the token interlude track "The Room". However, they themselves never complete the song.

What does complete the song? The fluid combination of all of the aforementioned ingredients; the layer-upon-layer nature of this music; the fact that the listener is never bored with the typical industrial repetition. The guitars flow into the synths flow into the choirs flow into the found sounds flow into the main vocals, and the music gains a macabre beauty for it all. While listening to this particular album, one thought kept flying through my head. "Hellscape". Do not take this for the sadomasochistic underworld of the modern industrial scene. To the contrary, "Crwn Thy Frnicatr" hearkens back to the literary Hell of old. A Hell that was not sickly and wasted---rather, an enormous and grandiose realm of insidious glory and pain. Psyclon Nine succeeds in that they bring to our ears this sound, without becoming cheesy or joke-ish. The finishing touches of this album are the lyrics. Waxing and waning between suicidal trauma and Luciferian drama, verging between feverish emotion and Miltonesque prose, they complement every other aspect of the music.

In the end, "Crwn Thy Frnicatr" falls apart if you individually inspect each aspect of its composition. Without the grandiose pomposity of its orchestrations, the lyrics become muddy and---dare I say it---emo? Without the guitars, the synths fall apart and unravel. However, one does not individually review each aspect of a fine wine, or each individual scent in a perfume. Rather, the overall profile or personality of the wine or perfume is what is looked for. And in this, "Crwn Thy Frnicatr" succeeds completely.

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