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CD Feature/ Transitional: "Nothing Real, Nothing Absent"

  Tobias

Is the world really such a bad place? Transitional's labelmates Heatdeath certainly seem to think so. „Everyday, things are getting worse“, they claim in the press release to their first, eponymously titled statement of intent, preparing their audience for impending doom. In stark contrast, the music on „Nothing Real, nothing Absent“, as dark and apocalyptically charged as it may be, is anything but depressive.

In fact, well over two thirds of these finely balanced thirtythree minutes are powerful rather than pessimistic, hymnical instead of horrific, majestic instead of misanthropic. The band have found a personal and mostly instrumental approach to Metal, which includes the hypnotic heaving and ebbing of potent powerchord riffing, the tribal tribulations of drums seemingly pounded by mammoth bones and a generally gloomy ambiance, but blends these elements with spacious, electronic soundscapes and industrial aesthetics.

Admittedly, this combination will never lead to stadium rock or popular tunes for joyous nights spent in front of Karaoke machines. „Nothing Real Nothing Absent“ opens with the apocalyptic funeral march, „Nowhere Shining“, a stoically triumphant manifesto of not wanting to go on and flows straight into the barren wasteland of empty machine code, fearsome factory poetry and bizarrely mangled voice processings that is „Fracture“. But these downwardly bound testaments of terror are merely overtures to the emphatic core of the album, a shimmering, uncut diamond of planetoid dimensions.

On „This Paradise Part 1“, two demonstrative chords are propelled by a primitive beat, but as the atmosphere tightens, a tender vocoder breathes out the words „All for you“ in an emotional loop, lending a bewildering Pop touch to this nocturnal hymn. On „Lustless“, alluring pads glisten in between the metallic onslaught as a robotoid voice enummerates vile verses and closer „Abandonment“ gradually concretises a mood of surreal cyber eroticism. Things may not be getting any better – but there is still plenty of beauty to be found.

So-called experts will probably call this Post-Metal, for the mere fact alone that it eschews the traditional song-format and opens itself up to the Avantgarde, but in its fantastic futuristicity, the term Pre-Metal would probably be more apt: Music suggesting something indescribably big, deeply yearning and supernaturally overwhelming which can not quite be fulfilled yet. They may not necessarily be the happiest band around, but with „Nothing Real Nothing Absent“, Transitional have just made the world a better place.

By Tobias Fischer