DELIRIA — Nausea (review)

Album · 2017 · Atmospheric Black Metal

3/5 · 2019-04-24
siLLy puPPy

Known as the Industrial City and a huge Hollywood sign spelling out its name on the mountain that lurks over it, South San Francisco is usually just drive through territory from the city of San Francisco to the SFO International Airport without much going on or much to speak of but as it turns out, there has been black metal being made somewhere within its spindly city limits that slink and wriggle all over the most northern reaches of the Santa Cruz mountain range. Nestled somewhere deep in this city unknown to the rest of the world is the atmospheric black metal band DELIRIA who mysteriously formed in 2017 and then released their only album so far NAUSEA.

While the band has recently expanded to five members, it started out as the trio of David Scanlon (guitars and various instruments), Adam Rupp (vocals) and Jared Klein (drums). This album only contains these three musicians delivering four tracks, three of which are normal length extending up to seven minutes with a fourth that goes on for over seventeen. Scanlon appears to be the bandleader on this on as he writes all the tracks. This album received a professional production touch at the Fang studios and came out the same year as the band’s official formation.

What we have here is a rather interesting if not remarkable style of atmospheric black metal. The tone is set up right on the very first track “Bad Faith” which begins with an arpeggiated clean guitar series of chords that delivers what sounds more like one of those 80s acoustic intros for thrash metal songs. It follows with a richer sound of a 12-string acoustic repeating the same exactly melodic sequence and it takes a few minutes before you actually realize that this is a black metal album and not an indie folk rock act. The lazy drumming joins in and at least it sounds like it’s in the rock genre but this introduction becomes tedious even as spoken words emerge from below but just as they do the black metal finally kicks in after three minutes of build up.

All four tracks basically follow the same pattern as the first. Soft clean buildups on acoustic guitars with atmospheric touches that erupt into an over-produced black metal guitar sound. The usual black metal traits are all present. The tremolo picking, the blast beatdrumming style, buried bass line and a thick cloudy atmospheric background. The second track “No Exit” starts with what almost sounds like a country rock type of groove it is grungy and accompanied by a lazy drumming style, the vocals are quite subdued in the mix and quite unintelligible. While the first track sounding OKish, this one sounds a little silly. Hmmm. Not a good sign is it? Carry on now.

The title track sounds like a reworking of “No Exit” with a different melodic tinkering. Yeah, it has some outbursts of heavier guitar work and some blasts of drum rolls but basically the same. It’s all quite clear at this point that this album isn’t anywhere close to being as colorful as the album cover suggests. Best for last? Not quite. The seventeen and a half minute closer “Hell Is Other People” pretty much begins like the first track with a clean guitar sequence and then begins to sum up the preceding tracks as if it were to remind us what we just heard. The only break from the monotony comes toward the end as the black metal fades out and an Italian pop song of the 60s perhaps closes the album. Now THAT was unexpected.

This album is fairly standard atmospheric black metal but really lacks any original touches. Add to that the production just doesn’t work and neither does the way the clean parts merge into the more aggressive. The juxtaposition of cheery melodies belies the fact that black metal is supposed to be scary and when it comes right down to it, the compositions are fairly bland as they are mere marches that don’t implement enough musical mojo to make this an interesting listen . It’s the kind of music that makes good background music as nothing is particularly bad per se but it’s certainly in the second decade of the 21st century, neither is it something that blows me away in any way whatsoever.