The Axis Of Perdition: Heart patients,be warned...

They say there's nothing to fear but fear itself.That fear is all in the mind.That fear is the unknown.The unseen.But what about hearing it?What happens when in the middle of an eerie silence one hears a loud crash?Does your heart race?Do you wish you were not in that place,that situation?

Now imagine CHOOSING to be in that situation.Confused?Well let this quartet from Middlesborough,U.K. help you out.They call themselves The Axis Of Perdition.Their style of music can at best be described as 'horror black metal'.These guys don't rely on technique or melody to get their message across.They rely on FEAR.Pure,unadulterated fear.With songs structured mostly on minor chords and discordant chromatics,The Axis Of Perdition are the aural embodiment of fear.And its not the epic kind of darkness.I'm talking static noises,gurgling,metallic,resonating voices;sudden clangs and very disturbing echos.They also sometimes use discordant voices (a scream and a mellow tone) to deliver that ultimate breath-shallower.The vocals are neither 'here' nor 'there',in the sense that they use rasps,shouts,static-laden screams,digitized growls and even conversational voices. The rhythm style is not the typical tremolo picking-dominant,4-note style of black metal but mostly slow,doomy chords and dissonant harmonies.Even the drumming hardly has a blast beat,but thanks to a drum machine,one tends to hear a lot of INSANELY fast double bass.

All in all, TAOP is a band like none other.TAOP is like a sadistic vampire that feeds on the fear in the listener.With lyrical themes like zombie experiments in a defunct hospital and the breeding technique of Ichneumon wasps (wasps that lay eggs in a live host and whose young kill the host), TAOP scare you.They heighten your senses.In a way so disturbing that it makes you want to hear them again and again.

Fear,for some it seems,is an art.