Virus - Memento Collider (2016)

Memento Collider hits you up front with the most mystique of all the Virus albums, the jazzy, walking bass lines of "Afield" served up with eerie guitar strums and those almost preachy-sounding spoken word narratives that the band had really mastered on the previous disc, The Agent That Shapes the Desert. To a group already so experimental, this already felt even further along the axis of weirdness, with just the right amount of progression and spin on the band's thick, low-end driven formula that it feels like a distinct step. There are also pieces, like this one, which seem almost as if they were largely improvisational, especially with all those breaks in its belly, which don't seem super polished but really pay off when the group erupts back into the jangling upper strings and beats.

Elsewhere, it does feel a little more practices and coherent, like "Rogue Fossil", one of my favorite Virus tracks in general for that amazing, bouncing blend of bass and guitars, almost like a Fugazi exponentially evolved into something more mesmerizing, melancholy in motion. The hues this band casts here are almost all shades of grey like the cover itself, and the material sounds like a mind starting to unravel in some corporate clean-space, stimulating itself with disjointed grooves. Those odd Voivod-like chords, with the saturation removed, clash into the more dextrous little fills and trills perfectly, and there are occasionally these walls of odd, vibrant chords which almost remind me of late 80s Sonic Youth and all their unusual tunings. Though the band will swap between tempos and riffing structures, I would actually say that a lot of the material is very consistent together, this is not a highly diverse album in of itself, but within even this little niche they find ample territory to explore that the full 45 minute experience never once bores me, and only tires me out due to the exhilaration and helplessness that comes with the realization I could never think up something this goddamn cool.

The one exception might be the closer "Phantom Oil Slick", because here is a track where for me the guitars came across just as level and powerful as those bass lines, with neither suffering. But even that, with the similar vocals gels so well with the material leading up to it, though I wasn't entirely sucked into the slower, broken ambient segue in the bridge, at least not until the bass finally takes over as the dominant instrument with the sparser chords splayed out above it. The title is too fitting though since this part of the song makes you think you're out on some foggy sea, drifting in a rowboat and perhaps running afoul of said oil slick. At any rate, listening to these Virus albums now for review is kind of making me sad that I won't get another one. Ved Buens Ende will be close enough, but interesting genius like this is all too rare, and even if I love this album a fraction less than Agent, it's still another one that will remain timeless escapism for when I need to exit the monotonies of my existence, or find new things hiding in the shadows in the corner of that reality. Inspired.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.25/10]

http://virusnorway.com/

Virus - Oblivion Clock EP (2012)

At 30 minutes duration, Oblivion Clock is fairly substantial for an EP, it's also a treat because it gathers not only a quartet of new tracks hot off the exhaust of their masterful 2011 album The Agent That Shapes the Desert, but also has a few added tracks that were only available through the double-vinyl release of that record, one of which is a cover tune, as well as an unreleased song from back on the Carheart recordings. What's more, the material here is almost all album quality, tracks that would have been just as worthwhile had they been released with Agent or Memento Collider. There are a couple exceptions, where the band experiments a little further out to left field than normal, but at least four of the seven tracks are superb...

And in most of those cases, they're tunes that drudge along a little slower, but with the familiar, groovy bass lines, and a little more of a wall of discord to the guitars. New tricks are keyboards are implemented to great effect, almost choir-like in their swells, and as is normal for Virus, the combination of those intricate, flowing bass parts, morose almost spoken-world vocals and eerie guitars is unnerving and unforgettable. "Inverted Escape" moves along at a pretty quick pace, but it's so dense with ideas in the guitar lines and grooves that it demands repeated listened to really ingest it all. "The Pull of the Crater" is really creepy with those warped, almost orchestrated effects creeping along to the jangling rhythm guitar and wailing ambiance, possibly my fave through the EP. The other tune I dig (from the Agent double-vinyl) is "Saturday Night Virus", a pumping, playful tune that stays true to its title with a disco-like momentum dowsed in all the Norwegians' strangeness...this one could be like some trippy answer to Primus or Mr. Bungle, but despite its upbeat perkiness it's just as compelling as the more serious fare.

The one that didn't quite succeed for me would be "Gaslight Exit", sort of droning, raw, guitar track, the most experimental anywhere here, but while the bevy of daunting tones is itself interesting, they don't do much of note with it until the end when it begins to resemble Virus proper. The cover of the Walker Bros' "Shutout" is kind of fun, like Virus getting all bluesy and proggy in a dimly-lit, smoky dive bar in the wee hours of the morning to an appreciative but half-drunk audience. One wonders what these guys could have come up with if they dug through a broader array of covers and gave them the same sort of treatment, bending them ever so slightly into their own sound palette. Oblivion Clock might not have been meaty on its own enough to fill the 4-year gap before Memento Collider would arrive, and its not completely consistent, but paired up with Agent it was more than enough to believe that they still had some distance in them, and its highly recommendable to anyone who dug the full-length albums leading up to it.

Verdict: Win [7.75/10]

http://virusnorway.com/

Virus - Carheart (2003)

I first encountered this album in early 2004 after finding it in a stack in the basement jam room of a drummer i was playing with, and had no idea what it was, thinking that it looked like some sort of alternative rock or post-hardcore record. When inquiring about it, he told me it was the new project of Ved Buens Ende, who I had already been exposed to, and thus I was intrigued enough to take it home, check it out, and then never really look back. The band's unusual stylistic interpretation of groovy, maudlin post-metal was one of a kind, aesthetically informed by everything from jazz to noise rock to a heavy smattering of Voivod in the bass, guitar and vocal departments, and being that that was one of if not my fave band in the world at that time, I was delighted to hear something new take any kind of related approach...

Carheart is the record I've had the most time to gel with, and fascinatingly, while there have been small evolutions in the band's sound over the four albums and two EPs, it's surprising how early they sort of found their niche and rarely ever wandered away from it. Not that I'm complaining, because this was such an unusual concoction in the first place, and the song quality itself would improve for their last two full-lengths, but they could put together a playlist or live set of anything in their output and it would flow pretty smoothly together. Thick, barreling bass grooves serve as alchemic constant, from which just about everything else flows, unless they're taking a pause to let the guitars' jangly, hazy dissonant note patterns. The drums are very rock & jazz oriented, a nice construct in which to settle the endless curving low end note patterns and their haunted, unnerving upper strings, and they will occasionally cycle in some additional percussion to clap and snap along. To top that all off, you have Czral switching between two vocal patterns, one very haughty sounding and the other more drugged, monotonous and subliminal, which creates this dope-addled atmosphere which sounds like you're hearing this in a dazed state after having your tonsils removed.

Within that range, I will say there's a good degree of versatility. Maybe not as much as something like a Primus album, but some tunes will go a little more moody and eerie, like "Road", letting the guitar and it's drizzly, slightly-twanged out tone take the fore. Others like "Gum, Meet, Mother", go for a more technical and proficient pacing which is sure to keep you glued to its subtleties as that almost numbing, fat bass tone collides with all the little distorted intricacies. In fact, Carheart is arguably the Norwegians' most varied effort just in terms of its rhythm and weird vocals, even lapsing for a pure ambient piece like "Dogs With Wheels" to break up the successions of vertigo-inducing rhythm. Once upon a time, I considered this my least favorite of their output, but I think through the years it has grown on me as one of the more monumental progressions of a formerly black metal or black metal adjacent act from this scene, and nowadays I like it more than the sophomore, The Black Flux, although that's also quite good. I would easily recommend this stuff to fans of Solefald, Ihsahn, Dodheimsgard, Ulver, Arcturus and the like, just as much as I'd offer it to a fan of Voivod or their fellow Canadians NoMeansNo. Exceptional, creative, deconstructive, timeless music seeped in evocative lyrical minimalism.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (As we whip ourselves to sleep)

http://virusnorway.com/

Virus - Investigator EP (2017)

I was somewhat disappointed when Virus announced they were going to break up in 2018, and when I heard the year after that their alma mater Ved Buens Ende was reforming, I continued to be bummed out. While I do enjoy that older band, I felt that Virus took some of the same sonic concepts and further extrapolated them into more interesting material, groovy and dissonant, progressive melancholia that was honestly one of the best examples I can think of when you throw out the idea of 'modern' metal. It's not that the band had no precedent, there's a healthy heaping of Voivod's guitar style in the mix, as well as in the groovy, driving bass lines, but they had this really introspective, almost laid back, urban vibe to them that was truly refreshing. In the end, they did give us four great full-length records, and I'm excited enough to hear what future Ved Buens Ende recordings might sound like, so it's hardly the apocalypse.

Their final recording as Virus was this two-track EP which felt like a marginally more roughly produced extension of Memento Collider. "Investigator" itself was one of their bassiest tunes yet, with loads of thick lines cruising along as the primary instrument while the drums splashed along in the background, fused with cleaner-toned guitar tones that create that ever-weird atmosphere the band is so well regarded for. Czral's vocals continue in that monotonous, wastoid timbre but take a clear back seat to the instrumentation. "The Blue Flags of the Dead" is a slower paced track, where the guitars stand out a little more but the bass is just as thick. There are a few organs and harps in there which mesh rather well with the atmosphere, and I loved the churny, choppy bass lines playing out under the vocal passages near the center of the track. Both tunes are pretty good, if not the best stuff the band had released. They certainly in a way felt just as complex, if not more complex than the material on Memento Collider and Oblivion Clock.

I've only heard this digitally, and assume the 7" is quite hard to find, and so as a swan song it's kind of underwhelming, and I've heard almost nobody ever talking about it. However, if you enjoyed their run from Agents through Memento Collider then it doesn't hurt to have a little more of the same, and these tunes are at least close to worthy of that magnificent output.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

 http://virusnorway.com/

Virus - The Agent That Shapes the Desert (2011)

While he's performed short stints with some of the most popular acts in all of Norse black metal, it is the more obscure Ved Buens Ende and Virus that will define the contributions of Carl-Michael Eide and Einhar Sjurso to the musical realm, and distend their legacy unto both eternity and oblivion. The Agent That Shapes the Desert is the third Virus album, honing in on the promise of The Black Flux, and it's hypnotic straight from the opening passages of the title track. Polished, progressive, and supremely psychedelic without ever needing to puncture an artery or send sublime smoke into the lungs of its listener, it speaks of a swerving, curving post-metal paradise that I feel very fortunate to have experienced.

The plot is not so thick as you might think. Virus accomplishes this medium with streams of dissonant, eerie guitar work that is adjoined to the incredible, fluid bass, which in itself would be trance-inducing due to its harried complexity and the deceptively dour, monotonous vocals of Eide. Where The Black Flux was largely successful at this formula, The Agent That Shapes the Desert almost never fails. It's less shining, perhaps. Less polar. But it wrests the listener from his or her perch in the wings of its alien dreaming and then drifts across the vast, empty expanse of the composers' thoughts. "Chromium Sun" and "Dead Cities of Syria" are simply astounding in their blissful bending of environment, waltzes of controlled ardor giving voice to the dry and delightful poetry of the lyrics. "Parched Rapids" another example of perfection with its thumping bass and the incandescent symmetry of its jangling, jarring guitar passages; whereas "Call of the Tuskers" creates an indie rock asylum for the paranoid post-rocking entrepreneur.

If Voivod had written a sequel to Nothingface while tripping on cactus juice in some plot of endless red sands and twisted Snake's genitalia until he had become some lurid baritone, it might sound like The Agent That Shapes the Desert. This is one of those bands and albums which openly mocks simple categorization, and yet it's appeasing; more accessible than either of their prior efforts, and one that I simply have not been able to stop listening to. The lyrics are intense, and despite their novelty, the compositions are incredibly focused. Outside of the band's own scripture, there is just nothing quite like it, and I do hope more will take the opportunity to experience both the shimmering, mirage-like highs and the muted hues of its lows. The gauntlet of the avant-garde has been thrown for the year 2011. Who dares to pick it up?

Verdict: Epic Win [9.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/czral

Virus - The Black Flux (2008)

Born of his previous project Ved Buens Ende, this is the latest vehicle for the unique and complex musical perspective of Carl-Michael Eide (i.e. Czral). Carheart was a fascinating debut, surely, yet The Black Flux takes this haunted aural vision to new levels of desolation and rapture.

The sound of Virus has been compared to Voivod, and while I can hear some similarity in the bass groove and discordant riffing akin to Nothingface, I think that's only a starting point. The haunting vocals of Eide truly set it apart from almost anything else. Menacing and beautiful at the same time, like a Norse Nick Cave channeling Barrett or Gilmour. The musicianship is likewise phenomenal, the jangling, swerving guitars paint bizarre, dissonant landscapes which compel me to hike them repeatedly. The bass playing and drums are the perfect compliment, and the trio has a wonderful harmony (dating from their time together in Ved Buens Ende.)

Highlights are many, the bass walk below the jarring chords of the title track, perhaps. The amazing riffing of "Shame Eclipse" or "As Virulent As You". The playful journey that is "Lost Peacocks", or the dense and disturbing "Archives". I don't think it's a perfect album, but that potential is still here to earn, as I am simply not yet worthy of comprehending all its grace. For the time being, let's say that Virus have entered the upper echelon of trend-setters to emanate from the Norse metal cosmos, alongside Ulver and Arcturus. If you seek a compelling, complex and different album, read no further, go order the CD.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

http://www.myspace.com/czral