Akitsa, Grands Tyrans, Hospital Productions, CD HOS442 (2015)
A new album from Akitsa, especially when it is the band’s first in 4 or 5 years, is always cause for celebration: this horde has always had a certain mystique with a wilful and obstinate attitude towards its music and a style of deceptively primitive raw BM that actually encompasses a great deal of experimentation and elements from other genres such as noise and punk. Throw in a set of killer tonsils, courtesy of Akitsa main-man Outre-Tombe (the former OT), which usually conveys various shades of extreme misanthropic derangement into the mix and it is obvious that here is a band that must never change its style but keep on going just as it is!
Within Akitsa’s distinct modus operandi of noisy buzzsaw punk-influenced tremolo guitars and very minimalist song structures, each and every song on “Grands Tyrans” manages to be different from the next in style, production and even the way the vocals are treated. “Devoile” is out of the start gates with shrill trilling guitar riffs, thudding drum pulses and a screaming reverb-drenched vocal on the verge of a breakdown. As always with Akitsa songs, the riffs repeat over and over with not much change until about halfway or two-thirds of the way through. There’s such a raw frazzled sound, with the singer teetering on borderline madness, that the repetition doesn’t seem at all boring. Just when you think you’ve pinned down the band, along comes “Le feu de l’abime / The fire of the abyss”, a raw punky recitation with a definite rock’n’roll groove and fat chunky slabs of motorcycle-grunge guitar. The singing transforms into a clean-toned snarl. Again a very repetitive song but with such raw chugga-chugga riffs, who cares? “Naufrage contemporain” proceeds with grim determination and harsh wintry phantom barking voices.
The middle tracks might be the most interesting of the nine songs for their atmospheric doom soundscapes. “Les flots de l’enfer / The streams of Hell” is a mournful rumble through shaky static, forlorn synth melody and a desperate vocal lament. The title track is a traipse through hellish doom drama (or Akitsa’s idea of doom drama) with OT attempting an impersonation of Ozzy Osbourne but ending up evil sinister Nazi doctor instead. Later tracks revisit some of the territory covered by the first five songs and the quality drops off a little in the album’s second half. The last two songs on the album are a bit ordinary though they are still very aggressive.
As long as the riffs start off super-catchy or just super-aggressive, Akitsa is well set and the vocal treatments are icing on the BM noise cake. There may not be as much experimentation here as on earlier albums “Au Crepuscule de l’Esperance” and “Sang Nordique”, and there is a greater emphasis on actual songs even if they are horribly chopped off at the end. Synthesiser is making its presence felt in minimalist fashion in a few songs. Even though the duo changes style throughout, the album is always consistent in sound and structure.
The album may represent a more song-oriented and less experimental direction for Akitsa, and while the band may be content with that, they may need to reconsider their current songwriting approach and try to move away from always pounding the same riff over and over. While that works for a track like “Le feu de l’abime”, it would be a major miracle if the band can always churn out groovetastic D-beat tracks. For the time being, Akitsa have delivered an album that is sure to please most fans.