Entry 336 - Sermon of Flames - I Have Seen The Light, and it Was Repulsive

 

There are albums that are in my collection for one specific reason. They fit an extremely specific mood that no other album can fill. A lot of times I didn't even know that the situation existed before hearing the album, but after exposure a new hole is filled that I wasn't aware of. Sermon of Flames just filled one of those holes.

I Have Seen The Light, and It was Repulsive is death metal at its base, it combines elements of brutal death metal at points, grindcore at others... mostly though the instrumentation is straight up death metal. There is this whole other aspect to the music though that is not contained to the guitar, bass, and drums... it's the noise.

While I have heard noise based death metal previously, the way its implemented here is a bit different. Normally the noise is the driving force if it's going to be part of the mix. When I think noise based death metal, I think harsh noise wall with some riffs under the intense wall of distortion and static. Not so here.

Sermon of Flames uses noise as one of the instruments in the album, it's not something that has been added on top as an afterthought to make the music more obscure... it's been intertwined with the riffs and feedback to create a cohesive sound that fully incorporates both genres into one.

This is something that really has to be heard to fully understand the scope of what is happening but I'll try to give an example here. On the start of side 2 the only melodic section of the entire album comes in, be it highly distorted. After the short interlude the guitars come in and during a specific part of the riff the harsh noise wall is elevated to almost overpowering the riff itself. The riff then shifts and the noise fades. It's used to amplify the music rather than dominate it.

That's one of nearly a hundred examples I could use for how the noise is interwoven into the DNA of this album. It's incredibly cool, and while this is not something I will listen to often, it is something that will stay in my collection indefinitely due to its highly unique nature.