Style: experimental death metal, djent, avant-garde black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Frank Zappa’s Jazz from Hell but death metal
Country: Canada
Release date: 6 December 2024
Sometimes the jokes write themselves: solo project of James Aniston Through Mists was inspired by the following quote throughout the creation of Hellscape: “if you’re going through Hell, keep going.” In only seven words, Aniston encapsulates my experience with forcing myself to listen to his seventh full length album in the past two years.
Hellscape is a strange mix of “experimental” death metal, black’n’roll, djent, and sizable unintelligible sections I’ll just call “crap” for categorizing reasons. Through Mists never really settles into a groove (by this I mean a coherent style, but also literally because he can hardly keep time despite the drums being programmed), and the constant switching almost immediately becomes a nuisance. And yet despite trying so many things, so little works. Like many a prolific one-man-band, I think the first big problem is a lack of somebody else to hold the artist accountable. Four months to churn out a complete experimental work worth listening to is a tall task, and the ideas across this collection of songs are spread thin, and most of the ideas do not work together at all. Only one moment really sticks out as a riff that would survive the cutting board if I were an honest friend—the main riff in “Footsteps in the Dark”—but its coolness is a byproduct of nailing the thin line between maniacally unhinged and nonsense; I think he was as lucky to stumble into it as a flipping a coin and having it land on its side.
If poor attempts at djent in your death metal weren’t enough of a deterrent, the most offensive aspect of Through Mists is Aniston’s vocal performance. I’ve heard more charming vocals in pornogrind albums. His rasps, growls, and shrieks are all woefully out of time and produced annoyingly loudly—just as loud as the poorly programmed drums which mostly play in a tremendously bland 4/4 Lars tempo. But really the vocals drag a merely completely incompetent instrumental performance down to the bottom of the death metal barrel with acts like Spacefog and Enigmatist. Seeking out good experimental metal and then enduring this Hellscape is like contracting an STD from splinters in said barrel and then having the infected pus squirt up into my eye. It’s an assault to my ears.
On top of all of this, it’s produced terribly with a MIDI-core base that sounds cheap and amateur. The instrument which suffers most from this particular aspect of the sound is the piano, which I unfortunately hoped could be a saving grace; instead, the horrific keys push Through Mists into tartarus, deeper than hell. They are so goddamn annoying, quirky like Frore 5 Four’s tedious circus music prog metal, disgustingly obnoxious like Frank Zappa’s Jazz from Hell, and awkwardly failing to be experimental like a worse version of the free jazz death metal outfit Effluence, the end product insufferably cacophonous and grating. Aniston should throw away his keyboard to focus on the guitar which he at least has a couple passable riffs using. Then he should find a friend to help balance out his varied ideas into something more palatable.
Hellscape is hell to listen to, and I would only wish it upon my worst enemies. As always, I respect the hustle and misguided love for music that a fertile solo artist produces, but if you truly love the medium, take some more pride in what you produce. This is a bad bedroom demo, not something that should have seen the light of day. I’d rather have suffered the classic fire and brimstone.
Recommended tracks: Footsteps in the Dark
You may also like: Effluence, Enigmatist, Spacefog, Pagan Rites, Enopolis, Void of Nothingness
Final verdict: 2/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: independent
Through Mists is:
– James Aniston (everything)
