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I read a "listeners-sound-off" collection of opinions about what's
wrong with the music business on Salon recently, and while I
agreed with the authors' unanimously nauseated assessment of the
state of commercial radio (which isn't just bad now, but is truly the
worst thing ever in the whole wide world, a few minutes' worth being
enough to cause any right-thinking person to start praying out loud
for swift, irreversible death), at the same time I wondered why these
people weren't looking toward the more obvious places for new
exciting music: the time-honored, the trustworthy places. The
stalwarts. Like, you know, Swedish heavy metal.
Not getting any play anywhere near you is Terror Succeeds, the
great new album by Impious. Terror Succeeds is ten death-metal
songs played in that melodic, twin-guitar, boulder-heavy Swedish
style. This style would be a constant topic of conversation if more
journalists and radio people were getting paid under the table to
write about it, but fortunately for good art and unfortunately for
the would-be listener who wonders how come there's no good hard rock
around any more, nobody at Impious' old label (Black Sun Records) or
at their new one (Century Media, who absorb so many other labels'
bands that they're like a heavy-metal Time-Warner, only less satanic)
plays the game the way they're supposed to. The result is that unless
you run out right now and buy Terror Succeeds, you'll never
know how good it is.
If I could, I'd tell you about how brilliantly it welds harsh metal
crunch to mid-tempo and cut-time riffs, and how exemplary it is of
the melodic Swedish death-metal style, about which people of
discernment should know at least enough to hold their own on the
subject should it arise at a cocktail party. I'd tell you how clean
the production is, and how tight the band plays as a whole. I'd tell
you, but the record is actually quite brutal, and it has blown the
top of my skull clean off, so I am going down to the hospital now. If
somebody wants to bring me down my boombox and the Impious CD, I'm in
room 236. Thanks in advance.
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