In case any fans of raw death metal were wondering, becoming a librarian requires going to graduate school in which you enroll in many courses that teach you useless theory that has very little to do with the practice of librarianship. One of the first courses that I took, "Human Information Behavior", a group of people in my class did a presentation on the information needs of "outsiders" vs "insiders". For about 45 minutes these individuals talked about the theoretical ins and outs of exactly what an "outsider" is - this term for this purpose was defined as someone who is a part of a 'scene' (for lack of better word) tangentially on the outside and do not have easy access to the same kind of information the members of that 'scene' have. While this definition is rather vague and a little convoluted, it becomes a little easier to see what exactly this is meant when one looks at outsider art or, in particular, outsider music. Outsider art, which outsider music is naturally a subsection of, is any art created by an artist who generally is unaware of any trends and thus any kind of outside influence in their music, whether by choice or not. This generally leads to very strange works, often produced by mentally ill people such as Henry Darger or Wesley Willis.Its difficult to place exactly where the Colombian metal scene fits into all this. In particular, bands like Parabellum and Reencarnación played a type of music which not only does not resemble anything else coming out of South America, but really nothing that I've heard before. The line between insanity and genius is often fine, and its hard to tell retroactively on what side either band fell on. Trying to label this as a brilliant piece of outsider art, a breathtaking and conceptually complex piece of high art, or just a bunch of talentless kids trying and failing miserably to emulate their Motorhead LPs is a futile attempt, and this sort of music can only be judged on its own terms.
A lot of outsider music due to its strange and often quite literally retarded sounds can produce a great deal of unintentionally hilarious songs. This was my first reaction to hearing "888". I had never heard music this insane before and burst out laughing when the band kicked into high speed in the opening title track. Its hard to describe exactly what this band sounds like. Structurally they play a rather limited range of riffs, generally only 3 - 4 per song at most, almost no soloing, and vocals are delivered in a gruff yet intelligible fashion. However the riffs themselves don't really sound like much of any type of discernable riffs. They have much more in common to the harsh noise anti-music stylings of early Beherit than anything else that was present in the metal scene at the time. The guitars sound horribly out of tune and the guitarist sounds like he is just running his fingers up and down the frets in a seemingly random pattern that is repeated in a riff form. The bass is largely unconcerned with what the guitar player is doing and is playing something else, the drummer is barely keeping the whole show together with a series of sloppy rhythms that would make early Sodom proud, and the Spanish language vocals are spit out at such a rapid pace that initially it sounds like the singer is having some kind of anxiety attack.
Its difficult to pin down any sort of influence in this music. South America, especially Brazil, had a very strong metal scene known for its raw death metal, but as harsh as those bands were, at least they had some semblance of song structure, riffing, and were clearly influenced by the heavier speed/thrash metal bands of the time. Brazil also had a rather large hardcore scene in the early 80s, but Reencarnación sounds like neither. Instead this sounds like a mismatch of sounds randomly pasted together. The whole recording feels very musically "wrong". If there was some kind of handbook that instructed you how to write a proper heavy metal song (ala the KLF), it seems that Reencarnación studied the handbook very carefully and decided to do the exact opposide. The band employs a few noise tracks, out of tune violins, and some truly mindblowing break down parts that sound like nothing a sane human being would write. To further add to the mystery, their countrymen Parabellum, who were producing equally insane and strange music, sounded nothing like this either.
I realize everything I've written so far sounds like it could easily be a negative review, but its not. I absolutely love this band, and this album is easily the best thing they've done. "888" is such a frantic and crazy recording, after the initial shock wore off, the recording clicked very heavily with me and certainly is amongst the best metal albums to come out of South America. Its difficult to call this death metal or black metal, but probably would not be incorrect to say that it falls in some nebulous hole in between the two.
This band has built up such a cult following that "888" has been reissued several times on both CD and vinyl, with the following EP "Acompáñame A La Tumba", another fantastic recording that is slightly thicker sounding and has some of the best cover art to grace any heavy metal 7". For the uninitiated, expecting a rather standard South American black metal recording like "I.N.R.I." or "Bestial Devastation" might be disappointed, but those open to more esoteric forms of death metal should love this. I really can't recommend this recording enough, this is one of those rare gems that encompasses the true essence of what makes being a fan of this kind of music worthwhile.
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