SEMEN DATURA

In this age of acts viewing the traditional as boring and, well, just too damn traditional, it has become a common occurrence that when a CD arrives from a German black metal band, one can be fairly certain that convention will be thrown right through the sliding glass door that serves as the entrance to your white-bread suburban patio. Such is the case with the, um, interestingly named SEMEN DATURA whose album "Einsamkeit" is an exercise in black metal detour and ADHD attentiveness.

That is not to say that passages do no repeat or that every song defies black metal idiom. Some passages do repeat and there are plenty of trad-BM guitar lines and DISSECTION harmonies. As well, there are bursts of feral black thrash ("Marschbefehl") and several groove-based turns of a decidedly SATYRICON kind. Then again, the sheer number of styles noted in those sentences alone speaks to the ever-changing nature of this beast. Moreover, there are a handful of areas where a moderate ethereality (not really shoe-gaze so much) takes hold; it is what I've come to describe as something approaching a black metal BURST ("Psychokrieg" and the title track). There are too myriad whipsawing shifts into musical terrain previously traveled by acts like DEATHSPELL OMEGA and FARSOT. Indeed, settling in and getting comfortable are ideas completely foreign to the members of SEMEN DATURA.

Aside from the construct variations then, "Einsamkeit" offers more than enough room for those that yearn only for black metal ferocity that conjures visions of nails driven through the hands of Jesus Christ, or to simply groove in smutty, ragged fashion. As for the success of the complete package, the compositional journeys are interesting, though not necessarily mind-blowing, and can occasionally, particularly during the album's second half, get to be a bit much, so that rather than wishing for a run-time eternity, with the end comes more than a measure of relief. Regardless, "Einsamkeit" is at the very least an album into which black metal devotees should look.