Mekanik

Der Mekanik Grooves

Duplicate Records 2008

This is a sort of a strange one out of Norway.  Mekanik have been described as "Black Prog Rock" and I figure that's an accurate enough description for this moody amalgam of styles.  Not to mention this song is sort of a supergroup with Sanrabb (Gehenna) as well as Candy Whorehole and Voldswagen (lydia Laska).  This 21 minute EP starts off with a keyboard heavy instrumental that brings to mind some tripped out and heavy The Doors material.  Devil's Mass couples doomy sensibilities with blasting and freezing cold black metal riffing.  It then ventures far out into left field with martial drumming underneath spaced out soundscapes and appropriately cheesy keyboards.   Ozzy would be mightily impressed at the Revelation inspired opening passages of Predators that set the stage for the apocalyptic desolation of the later stages of the track.  Mirror Mania has a doom laden attitude masquerading over the top of sweaty Danzig-esque, Rock N Roll beat down that the meat of the song consists of.  Dandy Whorehole's vocals tread a fine line between being perfect and being annoying.  Sometimes they have the perfect biker-bar attitude and others they have a sour tinge to them that makes me want to cringe.  Mekanik does well as an EP but I am not sure how I would feel about a full length album of their material.  It has the potential to be great or it could also venture too far a field from its doomy core.  If this project continues it'll be interesting to see which direction they end up venturing towards.