How many genre labels, hyperbolic adjectives, and comparative name-checks can you affix to an utterly unique 17 minute piece of extreme music until both the task of describing the music and your conception of the music in abstract finally lose all meaning?
[Let’s find out.]
Mastery is the solo project of a man named Ephemeral Domignostika, who hails from the Bay Area.
[So far so good.]
Mastery’s music falls somewhere between hyper-technical black metal — as evidenced by its unrelenting blastbeats, croaked vocals, and warp-speed guitar riffage — and improvisatory collage composition, which manifests in never-look-back song trajectories that speed through more disparate ideas, styles, and performance tactics than many bands achieve in their whole careers.
[You’re losing me. Approaching full meaninglessness.]
Mastery evokes the school of one-man black metal auteurs like Xasthur, Wrest, and (fellow Flenserite) Botanist by way of his commitment to his own singular and insular permutation of the genre’s established norms. His linear song structures combine the long-form scope of Wolves in the Throne Room or the almighty (also Bay Area-based) Weakling with the constantly mutating shred corkscrews of, say, Gorguts. His guitar work flits from extended tremolo picking passages characteristic of Emperor or, more recently, Krallice to atonal progressive wonkery closer in complexity to Meshuggah or, more recently, Artificial Brain.
[Yeah, no. No more. I want to die.]
I listened to “V.A.L.I.S.V.E.S.S.E.L.,” from Mastery’s upcoming LP called VALIS, and I left the experience in a state of profound awe and exhaustion. Now you try:
[Alright.]
• The Flenser: http://theflenser.com
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