Style: experimental, avant-garde, industrial, instrumental
Label: Dod Incarnate
Year: 2013
Home: Colorado
Members: Stefan Klein ~ all instruments
I've been following the music of Stefan Klein, under the name Dethcentrik & Dod Beverte, for awhile now & have even made some music with him. I don't believe I'm being too biased when I say I hear a lot of change in the Dethcentrik music since the first album I heard. But, now I will be biased by saying it would be nice to think our work together had an effect on his latest music & we influenced each other. Early Dethcentrik is this challenging onslaught of furiously played guitars or drums against distorted keyboards & garbled vocals coming out of a band that has turned into a one man outpouring. Those early Dethcentrik albums have received more than one 'worst of' honor from music reviewers. Maybe such honors will still be granted, but I believe Dethcentrik should be given some new accolades for growing & changing & continually breaking expectations & moving beyond a small template with a lot of bravery to experiment & find new templates to meander through. My ego would like to say I helped push him in those directions as he helped me do the same. At one point, for many of us, it was not too wrong to call Dethcentrik industrial atonal black metal more furious than compositionally complicated. But, now I hesitate to even call this metal, or metal as most of us probably define it. Dethcentrik has moved much more experimental & into the land of sound landscapes, far more in the industrial realm than the traditional Mayhem-Burzum influenced outpourings Dethcentrik is known for. Now there's even incredibly unabashed social criticism in the lyrics ... which might have always been there but the new music reflects it musically versus just being heavily distorted guitars clashing with pounding drums. Now the songs have as much tortured anxiety as the lyrics with the creation of music that includes birds, thunder, wind, saws & other natural or maybe not sounds ... though heavily distorted beyond recognition. As for an additional note on the social criticism ... the interesting thing about Dethcentrik is that the group has had the label of Satanic metal attached to it. Nothing could be further from the truth ... that is if you deem any band that doesn't sing love songs or the John Denver or Beach Boys catalog Satanic. Or, I mean, if you call this Satanic we have to talk, from "Land of the Slaves & the Home of Pure Hatred": "Watch as this country dies, eating itself from the inside./Watch evil rise, gaining power through disguise./Watch the world burn as it ceases to properly turn ... /Watch the truth shine bright & with wings of justice the world take flight." Or is this Satanic, from "Pledge of Compliance": "I pledge compliance to the emblem of Shackledom/& to the dictatorship for which it stands/One state, under bigotry/With persecution and pain for all non-whites & non-Christians." I guess if criticizing our culture with lots of distortion Satanic ... well, didn't the Beach Boys throw in some distortion for a song or two once & their last album certainly had some social commentary. Satan reigns, I guess.
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