Well, it sure is big. And some metal people, you know, they like big ones. And Greeks, well, it almost goes without saying. They have this entire history of bigness. And now they have The Great Mass.

Even though Septicflesh have been giving us really good big ones for a while, with 2008’s Communion flirting with great, they’re sometimes even better at shooting themselves in the foot along the way.

For instance, calling themselves Septicflesh in the first place. “Septic Flesh” doesn’t describe their eerie brand of non-wussy goth metal.  “Septic Flesh” brings to mind images of rot, decay, and general putrescence. It’s a word clump that would work with a Cannibal Corpse side project, not a band that’s sung about Persepolis and Faust.

Despite their inappropriate name, Septic have found a following for their effective merger of dark metal and orchestral support systems without the later dwarfing the former. Septic can even pull off silly and pretentious: check out the ridiculously-titled “Lovecraft’s Death”, where a spidery/spindly guitar figure is so unnerving and the orchestra cues so violent, it sort of does sound Lovecraftian in a big budget, Hellboy way.

But back to shooting one’s self in the foot. After thirteen odd years putting out reasonably titled records under their terrible band name, they’ve decided it was time to up the gross-out ante by titling their new issue, The Great Mass.

Mmmmm. Septicflesh‘s The Great Mass.  A great septic mass of putrescent, rotting flesh. Can’t wait!, say the metal fans that would actually like this kind of music. They probably meant evil mass or something but I kept coming back to something cancerous and gross. Maybe it’s me.

Onward to the music. This press release talks about them basically using orchestras differently than any metal band ever has. It’s true: this is the first band to use orchestras like they’d just seen Inception.

And not just that Brrruummmm!!!! cue of celestial time-space collapse—we’re talking the creator of that Brrruummmm!!!! In general, of Mr. Hans Zimmer, go-to composer for all of Christopher Nolan’s loud, crashy films, The Man for other directors looking for the state of the art in portentous hugeness, for that patentable wall of brass and choirs and more brass and timpani’s and then strings and more brass that only Zimmer seems to have the skill and pluck to provide. That’s what the Septics are trying to replicate here.

So, a new subgenere: Hans Zimmer metal. Zimmercore. Some bands, when they say, “Oh, there’s orchestra on the new CD”, you start having nightmares about vast Celine Dion-esque string sections gone bad.

Well, with Zimmercore, you have nightmares about huge Inception-esque brass sections with the instruments gaining cartoon eyes with an evil mouth and looking at the actual band, Septicflesh, and cackling, “Mmmm, a metal band! I think I will eat it.”

And it does. The mixes here vary between 50/50 and 40/60 with the orchestra winning handily in the splits.

“Five-Pointed-Star” seems an early winner. For starters, it sounds like Septicflesh, and I really like Septicflesh.

But at about 2:24—Inception’s Brrruummmm!!!! blows up any Septicflesh pep the song had and hast la vista metal, hello Zimmercore, as all 150 pieces of the Filmharmonic Orchestra of Prague pretty much absorb the band. (Incredibly, Peter Tagtgren mixes the orchestra’s percussionist louder than Akis Kapranos’s actual hardware, one supposes, to make it sound more, like, classical.)

In the same anti-metal spirit is “The Undead Keep Dreaming”. There’s an initially encouragingly, creepy wall of Septic guitars, a nicely pounding 16th note-based beat, an agonized growl, and you’re feeling all pumped and then, as we say here in Brooklyn, fugheddaboudit.

The orchestra/band stops and starts like some Hulk-sized Kurt Weil, Sotiris V and/or Seth Siro Anton growls like Tom Waits when he tries to sound like Popeye, a string section and men’s’ choir come to the fore, and what has this to do with metal?

Dude, it’s Zimmercore—pay attention.

Picking the best in show here is a cinch: It’s “Pyramid God”. Because 1. It features an actual killer guitar riff and 2. Instead of sundry Hans Zimmer-y cues, it feels imported from Clint Mansell’s endlessly copied circular theme of existential dread from Requiem for a Dream.

And so it goes. But what does the actual band sound like? Well, there are these huge, moderately complex orchestrations, right? And clearly, the guys in Septic, especially guitarist Christos Antoniou, who penned these orchestral arrangements, they went to a lot of time and expense here, to say nothing of how much energy went into organizing and in some way paying for and fretting about studio, musician, producer, engineer, programmer and tea boy time.

So you can understand the urge to want to show for all that agita. And they do. As far as the orchestral stuff goes, we’re talking near- Deutsche Grammophon quality sounds, real audiophile shit.

The band, not so much.  You get the sense the band did everything they could to not get in the way of these excellent orchestral recordings. The drums are muted and controlled, the guitars downright polite in Septic terms. When it’s a choice between a Zimmercore cue and a metal sound, you know which is going to get a thumb’s up, mix-wise.

Putting aside the CD’s designed bloodlessness, Septic has also stranded themselves in an aesthetic no man’s land. Not nearly complex enough to be taken seriously as “classical” or “serious” music, there’s also none of the cheesy pleasure of Cradle of Filth, the enjoyably, hyper-goth symphonic melodrama of Within Temptation, the serious chamber strings musings of recent Sunn 0))), or the refreshingly pure entertainment value of those other semi-Zimmerians, Dimmu Borgir. Speaking of pleasure, there’s none of it in reporting so sourly on a band as inspired as Septicflesh. I’ll just hope this is one of those foot-stepping moments and next time they’ll follow their pattern and return to the brilliance thing.

[Visit the band's website]

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