Transcending Bizarre?—The Serpent’s Manifolds (2008)

Details

Co-produced by Transcending Bizarre? Guitars and bass recorded at Alright Studio. Vocals, violins and flute recorded at Underground Sound Studio. Mixed and mastered at Underground Sound Studio, Thessaloniki, Greece.

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Band

• Kotzak—Vocals
• Haris—Guitars and drum programming
• Dim—Guitars and bass
• S.A. Akis (RIP 2010)—Drum programming and samples

Tracks

1. Dat rosa mel apibus (intro)
2. Irreversible
3. Cosmic zero equation
4. The serpent’s manifolds
5. Dimension hell
6. Cell
7. Writhing coils of construction
8. The music of the spheres
9. The navelless one
10. Infinite

Review

Transcending Bizarre? are, according to the metal archives, an avant-garde/post-black metal band from Greece. When I think of avant-garde metal, I think of the likes of Voivod, Celtic Frost, Diabolical Masquerade, Opera IX, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. This is less avant garde and more like how symphonic black metal ought to sound.

“Cell” (track 6), for instance, is perfect symphonic metal, reminiscent of when Metallica performed with the San Francisco Philharmonic for their S&M album. This doesn’t sound like disposable keyboard-padding to fill the gaps of a blast-beat frenzy, this is a metal band collaborating with an orchestra and choir together creating a soundscape that is magnificent in its ambition.

But it’s good! It’s powerfully good.

The highlight of the album for me, besides “Cell”, is “The music of the spheres” (track 8) which captures the same mad genius that has infected Devin Townsend in recent years. It is heavy, it is epic, and in places is utterly bonkers. I love it.

The album closes with “Infinite” (track 10), which contrary to the title lasts 9′ 14″ – the longest track on the album. It opens with something akin to one of those lullaby albums where metal songs are interpreted in the style of cot mobiles, before morphing into a full, symphonic black metal explosion of riffs and phrases. Then about three minutes in it quietens to an orchestral, pastoral soundscape and builds again, morphing and twisting with emotional guitar solos, until about two-thirds of the way through the track the ‘anger’ and metal return. And then part way through a riff pattern it ends.

Conclusion

From the cover alone, I wasn’t expecting much from this album. But boy! did it surprise me. This is how symphonic metal should sound. In places it follows the traditional symphonic metal patterns, but for the most part it goes off-piste and takes us on a dangerous and exciting exploration of what else is possible when you mix such different genres of music.

While this isn’t, for me, as clinically beautiful an album as say Diabolical Masquerade—Death’s Design: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2007), it’s still a highly impressive album,

Review score: 95%