Magboots and Überchriist Reviewed
Magboots – As If
It helps if you can properly play it. But, and you’ll have to trust me, technical proficiency is entirely unessential to your enjoyment of a musical instrumental. There’s something built into it, and all you gotta do is hit upon the right combination. All you need is one of them dumb, old guitars, the ability to play an E chord and a fuzz box. You just step on that thing and the world… well, it disappears.
This ain’t no trick, no illusion, no pastime that will inevitably lead you to ruin. This is the real world as far as it can be reflected by your imagination. And, frankly, given everything that the news is telling us is going on in the world, and your lack of ability to meaningfully affect these events, you’re better off staying inside your head. That’s what Swede stoner-rockers, Magboots, certainly believe.
Fittingly, “As If” starts with the sound of a fuzzed-out guitar so thick that it will affect your immediate field of vision upon hearing the first notes. Good! You’ve got nowhere to go, and that’s the point. In a world where people can’t seem to agree on anything, Magboots are telling you to stay inside, pick a thing that you love and work with it until the wheels fall off. What’s the alternative? Writing angry texts to the White House’s social media accounts?
Überchriist – Anti-Phoenix Descent
Pop music was supposed to be the music of the people, tunes stripped of the needless sophistication of classical or jazz. Then rock, in all its forms, promised the audience that tunes could come from any source of inspiration and include any kinds of sounds. Yet, for something supposedly so obsessed with freedom, pop-rock has very clear lines and very strict taboos.
Black metal, on the other hand, made use of all of the things that pop music felt it couldn’t use. The original Norwegian bands, themselves trying to contrast against their Swedish rivals, made loud, lo-fi, evil-obsessed rock music. But then the barriers came down. Some fans of the genre obsess over the lo-fi aspects or geography, while likely missing the point.
In that sense, Überchriist is alternative black metal. It’s made in the U.S. and for the most part is sparkling clean-sounding. On the other hand, what “Anti-Phoenix Descent” shares with the genre’s past is an obsession with horror-like themes related to devils, their hand in humanity’s evolution and individualism. It’s quite an interesting exercise. And for all of its supposed evilness, it’s the kind of sound that you can just soak in like a warm bath.
