The Amenta - n0n
Listenable Records
Industrial Metal
12 songs (49:05)
Release year: 2008
The Amenta, Listenable Records
Reviewed by Goat

Going back and relistening to Occasus in preparation for this review, it’s amazing quite how much The Amenta have changed in the four years since. Although this is clearly the same band, they’ve toned it down a fair bit, making less usage of the facepaint and Industrial jackets and strident Death Metal battery of their debut. Instead, n0n is a more insidious beast, making more of the electronics and drums than the riff-heavy debut. Of course, guitars are still a large part of the band’s sound here, but they do seem to be used more to a backdrop to the main sound, the electronics and Industrial element being the highlight.

Where before The Amenta were undeniably a Metal band, they seem content here to use aspects of their sound towards creating a typically bleak atmosphere, the sort of post-apocalyptic misery that Industrial Metal bands normally go for. Yet there are still aspects of that blast-heavy brutality in the likes of Slave, the scowling harshness of Whore. As a glance down the tracklisting will show, this is anything but cheerful stuff, and although there’s an inherent sameyness to most songs that mark them out as belonging to the same album, they are individual enough to make listening worthwhile. Moments like Spine are surprisingly melodic, and whilst Skin with its female spoken vocals will either be gripping or annoying, overall the album does slot neatly into its own little genre, the sort of thing that Fear Factory might be making today if they’d have avoided Nu Metal and actually done something with the genre they created instead of leaving it to rot in the cellar, afraid of what they had brought into the world.

Describing the music without relying overly on that “post-apocalyptic landscapes” guff is actually rather hard. Dirt, at least, has a Prog tinge to it, but for the most part the album takes the sound of Occasus and builds on it, Cancer especially. Early piledriver Junky bleeps and whistles like a murderous R2-D2, but the best sort of Industrial Metal – the insane paranoia of the likes of Red Harvest and The Axis Of Perdition – is replicated here without actually sounding a great deal like either band (although The Amenta are much closer to Red Harvest). If you’re looking for that classic Terminator-influenced ‘factory floor’ sort of Industrial, then you’ll love this – Vermin alone is the soundtrack to the conveyor belt from hell. If you’re not looking for that sound and aren’t really into Industrial Metal then you may well fail to see just what’s so good about n0n, and I can see more than a few Occasus fans being disappointed. Decent Industrial Metal is so rare these days, however, that it’s impossible not to recommend the good stuff when it comes along, and although it’s a bit repetitive and easy to get bored with, n0n is still unshakeably good stuff.

MySpace
Killing Songs :
Junky, Vermin, Whore, Dirt
Goat quoted 78 / 100
Other albums by The Amenta that we have reviewed:
The Amenta - Revelator reviewed by Goat and quoted 80 / 100
The Amenta - Flesh is Heir reviewed by Goat and quoted 83 / 100
The Amenta - Chokehold (EP) reviewed by Goat and quoted no quote
The Amenta - Occasus reviewed by Alex and quoted 82 / 100
0 readers voted
Average:
 0
You did not vote yet.
Vote now

There are 7 replies to this review. Last one on Fri Jun 12, 2009 6:03 pm
View and Post comments