Review Summary: Serbia's new weapon against pain.
When you hit today's demanding market with a new slab of metal under the tags of 'thrash' and 'progressive', your best hope, it seems, is that it won't be immediately received as
too generic by the more knowledgeable audience, while at the same time hooking the musical interest of a sufficient amount of younger ears to make them want more, ah! so much more. The bars of technical/instrumental proficiency have been raised to exhausting defaults, hardly any genre-hybrid formulas have been left unexplored (I am looking at you there, blackened-technical-sludge/doom-progressive-neo-trad-crust-post-punk-crossover-thrash bands), so it's just down to skilful songwriting now - which, admittedly, is also largely a matter of applying generative schemes to available resources and information, following more or less predictable choices. (Yes, I have been overdoing my reading on AI.) But perhaps this has become too pessimistic a take already from someone who, despite everything, takes comfort in believing that elements of the unexpected out there will continue to feed the Potential to Pleasantly Surprise Us (henceforth: PPSU) in however small or big ways.
That said, Quasarborn's third full-length album has tropes aplenty, but mostly good ones – the ones where the sounds you know and like are arranged well and delivered with skill. The added value that makes
Novo oružje protiv bola (Serbian for 'A new weapon against pain') worth more than one listen, however, comes from a set of bold choices that have proven musically rewarding. First, the focus on the technical approach which was prevalent in the two previous albums is abandoned for less complex structures and more straightforward songwriting with catchy melodies. Second, the lyrical language has shifted from English to the lads’ mother tongue. For me this is a welcome change that works in the band’s favour, as the Serbian articulation adds a peculiar expressive layer that matches well with this heavy brand of metal, as well as with a lyrical content that is mainly dark, melancholic, social-cynical and existential-philosophical in nature. On top of that, there is a moderate though regular incorporation of Balkan-oriental scales and melodic twists. These elements combine to form a well-dosed infusion of authentic emotion: in the fills and frills, chordings and phrasings, runs and leads, lyrics and vocal melodies throughout. Let’s call it pathos, but with the cringe factor reduced to a bearable minimum.
Other than that, this album just riffs massively, each track bringing memorable moments to the table. Thus, there’s the groovy downtuned riffing and cool use of pinch harmonics in the title track; the bass riffing and nice leads of “Urobor”; the infectious vocal lines of the up-tempo thrasher “Ne možeš imati sve” (‘You can’t have it all’); the powerful rhythm section and groovy bridges of “U plamenu” (‘In the flames’); the oriental scale runs and warm fusion soloing in the earworm “Prostor-vreme” (‘Space-time’); the heavy open-string arpeggios and grunt/clean vocal alternations in “Od kolevke do rova” (‘From the cradle to the trenches’). “Voz” (‘The train’, one of my personal favourites) is an excellent example of the balance Quasarborn are able to strike between almost poppy melancholic catchiness – the clean intro, the multivocal harmonies in the chorus – and crushing distortion. The instrumental “Ogledalo” (‘The mirror’) and “Menja se” (‘Changes’) seamlessly flow over into each other and form a mesmerizing two-piece that, up until the tempo acceleration in the final two minutes, stands as the album’s “To Live Is to Die”.
In a nation in turmoil that sees the larger part of its young and promising population emigrate to a better life abroad, what
Novo oružje protiv bola offers to those that stay is the coping tactic of taking existential and societal anxiety at face value, moulding and translating it – through the medium of metal – into a new palpable experience, something of sublimated value: a shot of soothing musical adrenaline. (I am perfectly aware of how bombastic this sounds but hey, isn’t this what music and art in general are about?) In doing so, Quasarborn also show evidence of further PPSU.
