http://www.senmuth.com/30.html
All posts after this one will follow albums chronologically, starting with Senmuth's earliest, Cognitive Discord.
The album starts off with some ambient organic music played on acoustic instruments of Asian descent. It then goes into some heavy sludgy area with synths over top. I must admit that I am surprised at how well produced the project is. For a man with this many releases under his belt I was expecting some bedroom quality recordings, but no, this sounds like it was done professionally. Also evident is the fact that Senmuth definitely has some skills playing the instruments, really impressive for someone who is allegedly self-taught.
This next track is not ambient like I was expecting. It's some fast paced industrial-metal ass kickery. Really, this rocks. The synths keep an middle eastern/asian vibe going through out the track.
The next track, Alibek, is a mid paced, kinda relaxed, but also kinda epic as piss track. Following it we return to another ambient drone piece, but this is complete with some nice classical guitar work. Amanauz is a darker piece which maintains the accordion synth but throws in some of that Aboginal bouncy sounding instrument thing. You know what the hell I'm talking about. It's a darker piece driven primarily by a dirty bassline.
The only vocals so far have been the aaayya ayyy ayyyy's on Ice. It's good stuff. This one's pretty liberal with the sitar usage.
As the album progresses, I am less wowed by it. It's still very good, though it's moved into more of a "History Channel Score" territory than a "sick industrial metal" one. I have allotted myself time to eat buffalo wings and text my girlfriend whilst listening. At this point I'm already asking myself why I intend to do this, but I have no intention to stop anytime soon.
I'm also looking at some other very productive metal musicians like Njiqahdda and Oaks of Bethel. While both prolific, they pale to Senmuth. Zarach "Baal" Tharagh may have Senmuth beat though. However, Zarach is crap, while the others all seem to produce material of a higher quality. I will give Zarach some credit though, he's not nearly as pretentious as the rest. Any band that's actually two bands and have members with literally unpronounceable names needs to chill.
Tribal Rivers & Roads of Spirits, despite the pretentious sounding name, is a return to the more song driven industrial metal side explored earlier on the album. And yes, it does rock fucking ass. Some weird vocally synth in the background really helps this song rock in a disturbing skuppy meets kmfdm kinda way thing, only without vocals proper.
The last two songs are both more historychannelXcore.
Over all a solid release, in fact a lot more than I had hoped for. Being my first I don't know how I 'd rank it in the grand scheme of things, so I'll just give it an arbitrary score of 79% (metal-archivesXcore). It's very well written and produced, but a lot of the moods clash. The rocking hell industrial doesn't mesh with the ambient so much. Also, the ambient, while very nice and surprisingly organic, can only do so much for me. I'd recommend it.
