Plasmodium
Towers of Silence

It is cosmic black metal I read about, I also read about drug trips gone bad and how they mix psychedelia with atmospheric and what have you? We will look upon how much of the promise they maintain for this album that shows a great cover, and it is the second album by this Australian band. They have taken their name from the class of organism that causes Malaria, and some other nice diseases – black metallers always seem to name themselves in such a manner. And usually they aren’t that brilliant even though some of them would like to think that they are, so how about this album?

It is rooted in the extreme metal with dark sounds spiced up with some psychedelic craziness and a bit of cosmic sounds. It is kind of like a dark trip, either in space or just in the mind, on LSD perhaps, with mostly darkness but then comes a few brighter specks of light – perhaps like a journey through space. The sound is pretty decent, but it is a black metal production so it will probably not please the general music audiences. I also think that it is pretty dissonant both when it comes to the vocal grunts and the sound in general, the lack of variation also makes the playing time seem a tad on the longer side.

The question one often asks is if it is any good, and I am not so sure. I like how the band is creative and come up with some fresh ideas, those are fun things that brings positives to this album. On the other hand, we then have the pretty tired pace, the fairly dull dissonant atmosphere that doesn’t really do it for me. I want to enjoy bands that dare to go against the grain, that brings fresh and cool ideas, but when their albums don’t really do anything it is hard to be impressed. There are things to like about Towers of Silence, but there are probably more things to dislike and therefore the rating will be lower.

The Australians certainly have some strong ideas, they know their dissonant stuff. Too bad that ideas alone rarely makes for hit music, and I say this because too much music lacks ideas and it would be great if the creative stuff was good all the time. But unfortunately it isn’t and Plasmodium may rise above the sensation of musical malaria but Towers of Silence is far from an impressive album.

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