G&P Review: Keitzer

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.
Matthew 24:6

Keitzer
The Last Defence
FDA Rekotz
A Midwestern town is in flames after cops dolled up in surplus military gear stormed out in force to put down protests after an unarmed black kid was shot by the police. America is easing its way into yet another war in the Middle East with an incremental build up that should make anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of Vietnam queasy. Israel and Gaza’s millennia-old internecine squabble is on again. Russia seems to be determined to reunite the old Soviet Union with Ukraine being first on the agenda.
It’s a fraught and violent time. Keitzer’s latest, The Last Defence, is a fraught and violent record that reflects its era. It may just be fortuitous (if that’s really the word) timing, but the downer news cycle synchs up perfectly with the Germans’ latest missive of relentless, bellicose negativity. The Last Defence is a single-minded beast that moves with the implacability of armored battalions cresting a battlefield. Every song rumbles along with the same Bolt Thrower chug by way of Nasum blast, and while the album may lack for variety, each of the 14 songs is like an incoming artillery round. From the sinuous, Nile-ish opener “Bellum Indicere” straight through the final shock of “…Before Annihilation,” Keitzer mine the sorry state of the world for inflammatory material. Just reading the song titles is likely to provoke PTSD in anyone who has spent time in a war zone: “Exist to Destroy,” “Forever War,” “Next Offensive” and “Glorious Dead” are dispatches from realms where bomb craters are more common than elementary schools with a soundtrack to match.
Musically, Keitzer do not deviate from the death-grind nexus that they’ve honed on past albums. If you’ve heard and enjoyed them in the past, then will offer up another 40 minute cluster bombing of the sound that’s served them so well. 

[Full disclosure: I received a download for review.]
The Last Defence

G&P Review: Keitzer

You see, I’m no good as a clergyman. I put my faith in an improbable and private image of a fatherly god. One who loved mankind, of course, but me most of all. Do you see, Jonas, what a monstrous mistake I made. An ignorant, spoiled and anxious wretch makes a rotten clergyman. Picture my prayers to an echo-god who gave benign answers and reassuring blessings. Every time I confronted God with the realities I witnessed he turned into something ugly and revolting. A spider god, a monster.

Winter Light
Dir. Ingmar Bergman
1963

Keitzer
Descend into Heresy
Yellow Dog FDA Rekotz
Keitzer do not “descend” into heresy on their latest death-grind smartbomb. That’s far too demure and passive of a verb for the German (and Portuguese) band’s terminal velocity body slam into the depths of religious negation on the follow up to 2008’s impressive As the World Burns. If you think of that prior album as the launching pad of a musical intercontinental ballistic missile, then Descent into Heresy is the concussive end of the trajectory, submitting to the lethal tug of gravity’s rainbow as Pynchon would put it.
Keitzer continue to churn out the complete, devastating album experience that seems to elude Misery Index. Grind and hardcore sensibilities get welded to a tank chassis carjacked from Bolt Thrower’s military surplus auction. It chugs and rumbles, feasting on a sulfurous diet of pure petroleum, belching noxious, toxic rage clouds as it burns across the countryside. Album superlative “Wrath” whirls like a death-spitting gatling gun. “Your Last Days” flattens the landscape with a cluster bomb barrage of devastating bass wastage. Then there’s "Chains," which probably typifies Descend into Heresy’s slavering maw: The song swarms like a kicked hornet’s nest until it all gets devoured by an iron-plated, Mothra-sized monster sporting an antique Pickelhaube and a Teutonic passion for precision-dealt death.
As the World Burns was just as pyrotechnic as its title suggested, but Descend into Heresy feels far meaner. There’s an abrasive, aggressive nihilism at work that crushes their competitors. This is the benchmark for death-grind in 2011.

[Full disclosure: The band sent me a download.]