Review Summary: Just what the doctor ordered...provided it's at the lowest dose possible.
There's something stupidly fascinating about a band like The Blight. They make a sort of obnoxious black metal hybrid with a uneasy drone backdrop that's grating on the ears and irritating to the sensibilities of most listeners. It's not good music because, hell, it's not really even music. Bands like The Blight can (and do) bang their instruments together, grind it up in the studio, and patent it as "cerebral" and people will eat it up. Let's call this the Tetragrammacide syndrome. Luckily, The Blight approach their noise with a certain
je ne sais quoi that makes them stand out among most of the crowd.
Meditations on Insignificance, The Blight's newest recording, is largely a blackened-noise affair which means that no matter what it sounds like, someone will dig it.That is to say that "blackened-noise" is something of a weirdly burgeoning sub-sub-sub-genre, appealing to those tired of how ubiquitous black metal has become this past decade. It's a panacea offering an interesting take on the harshness the genre is known for, with The Blight doing it pretty well so long as you can stomach an hour of grinding metal and pained wails.
If you can, you'll find
Meditations on Insignificance to be pretty palatable. Although last year's
Escalation was much more absorbing (and
much different), this new record is full of amusing experiments in sound. It's like hearing a band through a black hole, distant and contorted. The description (maybe) fits, with the suspiciously "space-prog" cover photo combined with song titles like "Planet" and "Galaxy." Most of the time it sounds like white noise played over a lo-fi black metal basement band, with quirky electronic sounds spiraling around every so often. Largely it is more than the sum of its parts. Just because the schtick is easy to see through doesn't mean it doesn't sound interesting.
Meditations on Insignificance certainly feels like what The Blight were going for--expansive chaotic
emptiness. The droning reprieves found on their last two releases take a backseat to the oppressive pummeling noise, which, while understandable, makes the whole thing a bit of a slog. When it comes together it works brilliantly, but unfortunately it's too often lost in the cacophony.
