Affliction Vector - Contra Hominem
If your idea of Italy is sipping negroni on the Amalfi Coast, then Affliction Vector might just ruin your life. This is tar-black, nightmarish hallucinogenic black metal from the lowest, outlying pits.
From the very outset, the most noticeable impact of Contra Hominem is the production. Intentionally low-fi, murky and unlit, it’s a dark inscrutable descent into somewhere tortured and unfathomable. The muffled, echoey approach has, of course, been used a lot by black metal acts to create an obscure mystique and salute the early underground aeon of the genre. Contra Hominem, however, has a ghoulish and organic sepulchral atmosphere that is roomy and claustrophobic at the same time. Antonio Strain (bass, guitars, vocals) described this sound as a “Faustian haze” and indeed it sounds like it was recorded in a lightless, inverted subterranean cathedral and you can’t tell where the source of the noise is coming from.
The tracks are mostly frenetically paced, with spindrifts of driving, buzzing riffs and clattering percussion careering away in the cavernous darkness. There are some very cool time changes between warp speed and strident, militaristic mid-paced. Stand out tracks might be the frenzied Lethal or the ballistic hellishness and snare punishment of Nero Gorgo which is embellished by the nifty addition of organs, enunciating an atmosphere of dread rather than cheesy theatricalism. AV also intersperse tracks with tone-setting, anxiety-inducing nightmare ambience such as the horror movie puppet show piano intro of Antiuomo, the haunted sewer effects of Cavern’s Murmur or Abyss Rises. The vocals are possessed, echoed, otherworldly shrieks somewhere in a miasma, completely incomprehensible and that is probably just as well. Strain also mentions the record was inspired by “deepest fears and the scars they leave” with an emphasis on the unsaid. Contra Hominem is loosely a parable from the perspective of someone who saw Death from a defamiliarized state but eventually healed and is able to describe the horrors they witnessed.
Has this form of black metal been tried before? Yes. Is it groundbreaking novelty? No. But what Affliction Vector achieve, however, is an engrossing, genuinely unnerving pitch black netherworld. The inscrutable and inexact nature of the production doesn’t detract from the sheer evil and punky aggression that radiates from the engulfing black mist. A really savage album, sonically and psychologically.
Affliction Vector on bandcamp: https://afflictionvector.bandcamp.com/