Deadlands

To say that the sounds emanating from Madder Mortem's head-spinning second album Deadlands are wholly unexpected would be putting it mildly. Released amidst the glut of post-death metal albums featuring beautifully dreamy female voices set to deliberate, low-end guitar riffs and ethereal synths, the Norwegian group's harsh, angular, clearly black metal-derived assault on the senses is nothing less than jarring. Although she is also occasionally given to whisper and soar like other metal sirens such as Anneke Van Giersbergen or Cristina Scabbia (see the unusually tender and melodic title track), Madder Mortem's Agnette Kirkevaag is an all-out belter by nature, ejecting full-throated, warbling, Linda Perry-like screams over tracks like "Faceless" and "Jigsaw (The Pattern and the Puzzle)." These, for their part can hardly be defined by as simplistic a term as 'progressive' or 'gothic,' both of which are regularly bandied about to any metal band with a chick singer, but which fall well short of describing Madder Mortem's wide sonic spectrum. Leave it to Norway's always slightly left-of-center musical aesthetic to conjure such a bizarre aural soup, where songs structures offer dense, chaotic complexities ("Silverspine," the aforementioned "Jigsaw"), while constantly delving in counterpoint dissonance and melody ("Omnivore," "Rust Cleansing") and even more surprising groove-oriented cuts ("Necropol Lit") — all of it performed with startling musicianship and mind-boggling twists and turns. In all honesty, Madder Mortem's challenging level of inventiveness and, well, lunacy almost guarantees that Deadlands will only translate to a very select and open-minded audience; yet for anyone capable of enjoying the extreme metal leanings of Emperor, the daring experimentalism of the Gathering and the fearless invention of Faith no More will delight in what they find here.