Cold Blank Stare - The Human Condition: Insights Into Madness

Cold Blank Stare - The Human Condition: Insights Into Madness

With this album the one-man band Cold Blank Stare manages to rise above the innumerable hoards of profoundly awful solo black metal projects out there. While by no means a pinnacle of the genre, “The Human Condition” is enjoyable, coherent, and oddly addictive.

The key to the album’s success is how frontman D.A. Siano expertly hooks together simple riffs on the lead guitar with equally straightforward bass and rhythm work. Unfortunately this strength is also inexorably intertwined with the album’s major weaknesses: a tinny, thin, and unusually clean lead guitar tone. The lead guitar tone here sounds like something you might hear coming out of a practice amp, really bad. Prime examples of this tone sticking out are at the very start of the album and during the first riff used in “Covered In Blood.”

Although the lead guitar sounds really poor on its own, its jangling tinny tone does not really jump out too much other than in the above examples. When listening to the album holistically, the jangling comes off as somewhat natural. The same is also true of the programmed-sounding drums. While anyone paying attention to them would say their timbre is flat, the drums never seriously hamper the album’s enjoyability. Cold Blank Stare gets away with this only because of how well put together the songs are. Drums in particular are tactfully composed and manage to be a bother at only one point during the album.

“The Human Condition” is well composed despite its simplicity. Songs on average probably have around four riffs but manage to stay dynamic and generate some atmosphere. As the heavier elements in the mix drown out the weaker elements, each song almost forces the listener to remain attentive. Melodies jangle out rather subtlety due to the quieter lead guitar and with the shifting rhythm and bass notes this serves as a mesmerizing backdrop for the strong vocal work. This draws the listener deeper into the song. The use of simple and sparse riffs and short melodic ideas is compositionally similar to Burzum but the overall approach results in a more traditionally aggressive black metal sound. Jangling as the lead guitar may be, its acerbic sound also serves to highlight a tortured, aggressive, and dissonant feel in the music. Dissonance is not something you would normally expect in such high quantities with stripped down black metal.

D.A. Siano has a damn powerful voice with an unusually strong and fast attack. By this I mean that whenever vocal part starts, the raspy bleating is instantly loud and powerful. This is similar to how N. Imperial’s vocals work sound-wise, although the actual vocals here sound much more in the traditional black metal style. With each syllable in the lyrics effortlessly and powerfully articulated it serves to emphasis the aggressive aspects of the album. Moreover, this allows the vocals to help push the songs forward despite the liberal use of structural repetition. What is disappointing is how vocally everything stays somewhat middle of the road and flat. With such a powerful voice it leaves me wanting to hear faster singing and longer drawn out screams.

Overall the songs fit well very together stylistically with the absolutely glaring exception of “Apostatize” which uses thrashy traditional metal riffs with doubled up vocal shouts. The song has good riffs and is  put together in the same manner as everything else in the album, but it really comes far out of left field. It almost sounds like the band was trying to do a cover.

Following this is another outlier song, “That Which Cannot Be Unseen” where the vocal style initially switches to a low, nasal, Attila-type rumble. Much more bass laden than everything else, this song serves as the highlight of the album rather than sticking out of place. This time Cold Blank Stare bends the jangling guitar from one note to another in the main riff as the rhythm keeps pulsing along. Consequently, we get to hear some kind of amorphous blob of sound that is simultaneously heavy and hypnotic. Everything about Cold Blank Stare’s writing style goes exactly right on this track. It flows so well you can listen to it over and over again. The only weak point is that the hi-hat sounds overbearingly fake/bad when it sounds off in 16th note bursts, which is odd because the drumming works so well elsewhere on the album.

Ultimately, “The Human Condition” does not pop out as anything astonishingly novel or fantastic, but Cold Blank Stare has provided a serviceable black metal album with enough charm to deserve repeated listens. In the same way a good stone mason can build a quality wall while using imperfect bricks the rough and unpolished aspects in this music do not ruin the work as a whole but are certainly noticeable.
 
Note - As of the time of this post the entire album can be downloaded for free at D.A. Siano's blog: http://www.dasiano.blogspot.com/