Every evening I walk my dog, Blossom. I’m usually listening to something during those walks, and tonight it was Abstracter’s Abominion album.

I’m not sure how I came across Abstracter. Maybe it was through my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Or maybe I heard them on Bandcamp’s The Metal Show. Or perhaps I found them on one of the many music blogs I read. Whatever. They were on my radar, and tonight I was going to listen to them.

I like the album. And I’ll listen to some of the related bands Spotify suggests.

It’s fascinating that the Cookie Monster mode of singing has become a genre unto itself. I don’t know if Napalm Death were the originator of the art form, but they were my introduction to that singing style, which was as far back as late last century.

I’m of two minds of that kind of vocal delivery of lyrics.

If your lyrics are indecipherable, then your lyrics are meaningless. Going back to Napalm Death, when Lee Dorrian was in the band, he had some profound, well-thought ideas he sang about. You’d never know if, though, because Lee was a caterwaul in human form. I so rarely get to use that word. Caterwaul.

At the same time, I can simultaneously hold another thought in my head that, to paraphrase Bruce Sterling, heavy metal cranked to 11 becomes an international language. Or, to paraphrase Steve Albini, the lyrics in his band, Big Black, were simply there as a hook because the modern ear expects some lyric. The lyrics are unimportant, and that’s the point. The lyrics delivered gutturally become just another instrument.

And so we have Abstracter, carrying on the Cookie Monster tradition of singing, this time in the codified genre of black metal.

I say codified because once you’ve heard Hanatarash demolishing space and time like a sledgehammer through a cinder block through their use of power electronics accompanied by Yamantaka Eye’s shrieking, you realize rigid the form metal is. Not that you’d want to listen to bands like Hanatarash all day, though.

To bring this ramble to a close, I especially enjoyed Abstracter’s track,  “Lighteater.”

🎵