ASPHYX — The Rack (review)

Album · 1991 · Death Metal

3.5/5 · 2010-04-30
Murphy

If only asphyxiation were as enjoyable as this album, then more people might be found dead in ‘The Quest of Absurdity’. This quest is how the album begins; reaching, searching, out into space, abstractions of thought, almost ethereal in delivery. A false façade of what is to come! What a thrashing we are about receive!

Let us hearken back the early nineties. Death Metal was still raw and in its prime. If one were to poke and prod at the nooks and crannies of the underground, unique entities would topple forth into unsuspecting ears. It was in this era that Asphyx stepped up to the plate to grace our pretty little ears with their tempestuous debut that would mark the beginning and end of my interest in the band. It is not unusual for someone with my tastes to take this stance, to cherry pick then spit contemptuously on the rest. As mentioned above ‘The Rack’ kicks off the procession with an instrumental interlude, formless and drifting. You are now ensconced in your armchair, gripping the wings lightly, knowing quiet well this is the calm before the storm. How do you know this? You were recommended this as brethren to Autopsy. They were not wrong in their parity between sounds, tho’ mark my word; this is no reflection in the spiegelsaal.

Racks, in the decrepit realm of Death Metal remind me of torture, and this might just work perfectly as a metaphor to describe Asphyx’s sound: “A form lies face down on the rack, male or female, we do not know, lets not make preferences, they are beautiful nevertheless in their own macabre way. Tensing, thrashes rein down on this ‘Vermin’, harsh and raw, riddled with old death. They mused upon their ‘diabolical existence’, the nightly orgies of thrash, death and doom. Sometimes it was a combination of thrash and death, then death and doom, then thrash, death and doom all at once, it mattered little now in this ‘Wasteland of Terror’. Encapsulated in this terror an ‘Ode to a Nameless Grave’ rang loudly in their ears. Grave nameless no longer, the prophecy was writ, ‘Pages in Blood’, on their welt strewn back. Oh, if those woes were not enough, the highlight, the epic, is yet to come. They always save the best till last. We are only 27 odd minutes in but still fresh in the minds eye is a limp bloodied mess. I squint, wondering to myself ‘was it ever human’? I wonder what they are thinking, nothing probably. What is there to think in such a state? When it is nigh on impossible to conjure up those rasping breaths out of withered lungs. They say ‘The Rack’ is a place where ‘The Sickening Dwell’, truth be told. The epic, very well, I warn it is ‘Asphyx(iation)’ at its worst (best?). Lids flicker with distress, they know what’s coming: suffocation. A blackness veiling their face, the material coarse, irregularities formed in its surface by others trying to gnash away the end with their teeth. They revolt, but the end is always the same, silence, it matters not.”

…The Rack…

Lovely cover, if I might say so. The LP is a sight for sore eyes.