Recognising that their native Norway is mainly woodlands, the members of this band live out there, grow their own food and live a natural life style, re-joining the urban world occasionally to play at concerts. It’s certainly an unusual base for this work of Progressive Grindcore.
Lifestyles apart, I’m not sure I got the point of “Selection by Manipulation”. It’s not entirely disharmonious, nor is it distorted. The grainy sound, which may be attributed to home made amps made in a home made studio, is probably what they wanted. It’s not clear in any sense.
Over 25 minutes or so, there are 9 tracks, some of them short and undefined musical statements. The first three are deep, throaty blasts of sludge. This sets the tone for the whole piece. After taking us into a dark place, it stops and we are then taken to the next monolithic slab. The music is ponderous, bordering on Doom but it isn’t that. Rather it ploughs on grimly in its unproduced way like a chainsaw working its way through trees. There’s the very occasional lighter guitar section as there is at the end of “Søvngjenger” but for the most part it’s harsh, deep and heavy and with minimal sophistication. “Golden Promise” is a repetitive dirge with a doom-laden riff as if Cult of Luna were having a particularly gloomy day. Then a couple of brief attacks follow: the curiously titled “Ou est le Brie” and “Shut Up” which I can only describe as a piece of punk-like anarchic Grind chaos. Normality does not resume with the longer title track which goes beyond musical boundaries. This fuzzy onslaught has only the vaguest of musical directions. There’s plenty of intensity in amongst the musical carnage. The lack of shape or pattern suggest a sort of musical thuggery. After another short blast, the album ends with “I Surrender”, noteworthy again for its Cult of Luna style sludginess. A strange monastic chant accompanies the dark and violent background.
I should just stop there, like many of the tracks on this strange album. I found I was starting to get it and it would stop, and the whole process repeats itself. That’s not to say that the album is boring. It’s certainly not that. Difficult and bordering on the unfathomable is the way I would sum up “Selection by Elimination”.
http://www.lacasafantom.com
