No matter how hard I've tried, I still can't understand what compels certain talented bands to tread water for years, monotonously releasing albums containing yet another batch of variations on an old theme. Usually such groups enjoy respect within the style they belong to, and they retire earlier than most, having earned themselves a tribute album. Others — those who are genuinely restless, thrown from side to side at the risk of their creative lives — are often reviled as the worst kind of metal outcasts, yet these very "outcasts" somehow live far longer, never ceasing to be interesting.
DISMAL EUPHONY? "No-o, this isn't black metal anymore," one will whine. Not black metal at all, I'll agree — it hasn't been black metal for a long time, yet it still hooks you harder than the true-satanic-necro-pagan exercises of countless other bands. On the new album with the puzzling title "Python Zero," the band crafted fewer than ten compositions, but what compositions! It's hard to apply the word "hit" to these songs, but equally hard to do without it: take "Magma" and "Birth Reverse" alone — these aren't things to toss words at; you need to feel them with every fiber of your being. Someone might say their music has become sappy, even MTV-ish in some ways, but I categorically disagree — rather, it's serenely beautiful. Many vocal inflections seem borrowed from indie rock; a pinch of gothic spice doesn't spoil the overall picture at all; and of course those expressive guitars that cry, growl, and at times — as in "Needle" — seem to cautiously whisper something... The velocity of the biting "Critical Mass" and "Plasma Pool" reminds us that DE is still a metal band; the country-tinged "Flyineye" might convince you otherwise, yet it still goes down in one breath. There's a sense that the album is a genuine dedication to something or someone, only what or whom remains unsaid. The eared lizard on the cover and the strange photos in the booklet further underscore this disc's individuality. Warm, homey music that sounds superb even at a quarter of the volume — something that for many other extreme acts would amount to "audio castration." A multitude of minute details, assembled and fused with intelligence and considerable taste — the most important criterion of musical substance, in my view. It would hardly be fair of me to call "Python Zero" a sensation or a "new milestone" in metal history, but I think few will be left indifferent by this disc.