Reviewed - 06/05/05

The Unclenching of Fists
[ProCon Media]

My life is now complete. I can now die happy... for I have heard a juxtaposition of black metal blasting and Tuvan two-tone throat singing.

I have been a fan of the former style of music since discovering Emperor many years ago. I have been a fan of the latter – a vocal style originating in eastern Asia that makes use of harmonics to 'sing' two different notes simultaneously – since soon after discovering the Californian multi-instrumentalist menagerie known as Estradasphere. Never did I ever expect to hear the two together on one album, let along in the same song... but that is just the feat accomplished by the Portuguese group the Firstborn. The song in question, "To Roam the Endless Plains," is the second track off their new album, "The Unclenching of Fists." And believe it or not, this is not the most shocking moment present on this disc.

The Firstborn utilize a lot more than just Tuvan musical traditions on their third full-length album, "The Unclenching of Fists." This four-piece (plus two session musicians) extreme metal group merges death metal and black metal into one solid onslaught of music, but then tempers it with various world influences – I here Sumerian flutes, Tibetan monk chants, sitars, and other Asian musical traditions, as well as the aforementioned Tuvan throat singing. In many ways the Firstborn do with "The Unclenching of Fists" what Hollenthon accomplish through 1999's "Domus Mundi." But the Firstborn are far harder and heavier than Hollenthon, and the world traditions utilized come more from Asia than the Middle East or elsewhere.

"The Unclenching of Fists" is a concept album, one based on Tantric Buddhism, specifically the Bardo Thödol (the Tibetan Book of the Dead). Thus, the various Eastern instruments and textures interwoven amongst the metal make sense in a thematic way. I also like the fact that certain melodies or rhythms reappear throughout the album (not as often as, say, Symphony X's "V" does this, but still more frequently than the average metal concept album).

There are definite Morbid Angel influences present, as well as some Emperor and other general similarities to black metal and death metal, old school and new school. One comparison that does not work is Nile; surprisingly, even though both Nile and the Firstborn set out to accomplish the same general task (writing conceptual extreme music about the ancient writings of an Eastern or Middle Eastern culture, combining brutal metal with ethnic musical instruments and songwriting), moments where one sounds like the other are infrequent. While Nile is an Ancient Egyptian blast fest, the Firstborn are far more dynamic with their music, varying speed or rhythm but never compromising the extreme Eastern nature of their music. "The Unclenching of Fists" is not always a fast or distorted album, but it is always dark, always heavy, and always hauntingly Asian.

And even better, every song on "The Unclenching of Fists" stands out as both a fantastic assault of heavy metal and a memorable episode of melodic world music. Most vocals are harsh, either low-end or high-end, though there are a few uses of hard-edged clean vocals or harmonic layering of vocal lines. When the Firstborn are brutal, they are all the way – some of the fastest blastbeats and harshest death vocals around. And yet, they are not afraid to suddenly drop into an acoustic moment, or spontaneously transform distorted guitar shredding into moody sitar picking.

There's really not much to complain about here. The sound quality/mix could use some improvement, but this is practically a given amongst unestablished underground metal bands (or artists playing any sort of music). And I am afraid that some of the world music intricacies present here may be lost upon most extreme music fans – after all, there can't be too many people out there who love Morbid Angel and the Tibetan Galing with equal abandon. But for those of us who do… it's hard not to love such musical combinations.

"The Unclenching of Fists" is a fantastic album, almost perfectly melding Tibetan and Buddhist musical traditions (and concepts) with scathing metal and sonic brutality. I'm not sure whether every album by the Firstborn incorporates such a wide variety of musical instruments and textures… but I certainly hope so. And I certainly hope that it doesn’t take another five years to follow up "The Unclenching of Fists" (though if such a timeline is required for music of this caliber, I'm fine waiting).