Review of DUSK - Bunker
There's a point where industrial black metal stops sounding like a metal band experimenting with electronics and starts resembling electronic music that occasionally remembers it has guitars. Costa Rica's DUSK have been operating somewhere around that point for years, and Bunker takes the idea further. Anyone expecting traditional black metal with a few synthesizers in the background is going to have a difficult time with this one.
The band has spent a decade developing its particular mixture of mechanical percussion, distorted vocals, low-frequency electronics and black metal aggression. On Bunker, the electronic side has enough control over the arrangements that the guitars sometimes feel like an additional source of noise rather than the main attraction. It's a peculiar approach, but DUSK seem perfectly comfortable with it. The six numbered compositions also make more sense as parts of a single recording than as songs competing for attention.
The opening couple of pieces are surprisingly restless. "Bunker I" starts with electronic noise before a pounding industrial beat takes over, and the guitars eventually arrive with a burst of tremolo picking. "Bunker II" keeps changing its emphasis between frantic percussion and quieter keyboard passages. There's even a recurring sonar-like sound in the background, a small detail that does a good deal of work in establishing the atmosphere. DUSK are at their most convincing when these changes happen quickly, before any particular rhythm has time to become tiresome.
Later, the album becomes more interested in repetition. "Bunker III" slows things down considerably, relying on the gradual manipulation of samples and electronic patterns rather than obvious melodic development. There's something oppressive about the way the same sounds keep returning in slightly altered combinations. The production gives these details plenty of room, which is important when so much of the music depends on small changes rather than conventional riffs.
I can see why this approach would appeal to someone who enjoys the more mechanical side of SAMAEL or the harsher end of dark electronic music. DUSK have their own way of arranging these elements, though, and they're willing to let the synthesizers do much of the work. The vocals, heavily distorted and thoroughly unpleasant, fit the material without demanding constant attention. The whole thing feels deliberately hostile to anything resembling warmth or spontaneity.
That last point is also where I have some reservations. DUSK are very good at constructing a particular atmosphere, perhaps a little too good. Once the initial excitement of the sound design wears off, some passages offer relatively little beyond another adjustment to the same machinery. The arrangements are carefully controlled, and there are plenty of details to notice, but I sometimes wish something would happen that genuinely upset the pattern. A strange riff, an unexpected melody, even a badly behaved transition could have made the record more memorable.
The closing "Dunkelheit (RMX)" is an interesting choice. Reworking BURZUM's well-known composition through DUSK's electronic vocabulary is certainly more adventurous than recording a straightforward cover. The original's hypnotic quality lends itself to this sort of treatment, although the result belongs much more comfortably to the band's industrial world than to the Norwegian black metal tradition from which it came.
At roughly half an hour, Bunker doesn't demand an unreasonable amount of patience. The material is tightly arranged, the production is effective, and DUSK have developed a sound that would be difficult to mistake for anyone else's. I enjoyed the more aggressive early sections and the attention paid to individual electronic textures. The longer the record continues, however, the more its precision begins to work against it. Everything is exactly where it should be, and after a while I wanted something to go wrong.
Thanks to Grand Sounds PR.
