24th January 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
These are dark days. I feel as if I’ve written words to this effect a lot in recent months and years. It would perhaps be rather too much to expect there to be the sunrise of a new, optimistic dawn breaking over the horizon, but when there is nothing but the glow of flames beneath a pall of smoke on so many very real horizons, any sun on the metaphorical horizon is eclipsed by a billowing pother and clouds of ash. And then, last night, I felt my heart sink yet deeper still as Donald Trump signed away the protection of the Arctic in his quest for ‘liquid gold’, and declared a ‘state of emergency’ over the Mexican border and promised mass-deportations – ‘millions and millions’, being his megalomaniacal mantra, while the man who owns him, the richest man on the planet, who seeks not only world domination, but galactic domination, threw Nazi salutes to a huge crowd of fanatics.
Fighting the urge to assume a foetal position on the hearth rug in front of the fire and stay there for the next four years in the hope there may still be a world after that, I poured a strong winter ale and took some time to sift through my submissions for something that might make suitable listening.
Listening to light music in the face of such darkness and despondency feels inappropriate, somehow, so stumbling upon the latest album by Watch My Dying felt fortuitous. Extreme metal has a way of providing a means of escape, sometimes.
According to their bio, ‘Watch My Dying has been a cornerstone of the Hungarian metal scene for 25 years, a hidden gem for international fans of extreme metal. Formed in 1999 in Hungary, the band quickly became a defining force in extreme tech/groove metal throughout the early 2000s… Known for their philosophical and socio-critical Hungarian lyrics, WMD stands out in the extreme metal genre, with excerpts of their work inspiring novels and poetry in Hungary.’
It’s the title track which opens the album, with a slow, atmospheric build, before heavy, trudging guitars enter the fray, and it’s only in final throes that all fury breaks loose.
While there’s no shortage of archetypally death- and black-metal riffs, WMD forge a claustrophobic atmosphere with chunky, chugging segments, enriched by layers of cold, misty synths, and some thick, nu-metal slabs of overdrive, too: ‘Kopogtatni egy tükrön’ is exemplary. ‘Jobb nap úgysem lehet’ provides an interlude of heavy drone and hypnotic tribal drumming before one of the album’s most accessible tracks, ‘Napköszörű’ crashes in. It’s hardly a party banger, but brings together industrial and metal with a certain theatricality, finished with some impressively technical details – but none of it’s overdone. ‘Minden rendben’ is more aggrotech than anything specifically metal, and it’s a banger.
Egyenes Kerőlő isn’t nearly as dark as a whole as the first few songs suggest, but it’s still plenty heavy and leads the listener on something of a sonic journey. They cram a lot into the eleven tracks, especially when considering that the majority are under four minutes, with three clocking in around the minute mark. It’s certainly varied, and while not all the songs have quite the same appeal – the last track, ‘Utolsó Fejezet’, borders on Eurovision folk – the fact that they’re in no way predictable is a strong plus.
So many technical players are so busy showcasing their skills that they forget the value of songs. This is not the case with Watch My Dying: the groove element is strong, and there are melodies in the mix – just not in the vocals. The end result is more accessible and uplifting than I would ever have imagined. I almost forgot that the world is ending for a good twenty minutes.
AA
Aural Aggravation 