Negative Plane / Malthusian live in Kolozsvár (Cluj)

Negative Plane / Malthusian live in Kolozsvár (Cluj) Flying Circus PUB, 21.07.2015

I was craving to see NEGATIVE PLANE live, and we were lucky to catch them on European ground, especially here in the eastern part, because the tour went no further far from here.

400 km driving that day, attend the show, back in the car, drive home in the night, sleep less than 4 hours, get up, get to work, and drive another 200 km. And still the next day I didn’t feel any exhaust or weariness, because NEGATIVE PLANE made not my day, but at least my week.  

MALTHUSIAN was the opening act of this event. There’s a lot of stir in the scene right now around this band, and to be honest I don’t get it why. I mean I get it why, because there’s this thing now with these dark and brutal bands playing something between death and black metal, crushing, heavy with not standard melody line, bands like Bölzer, Antediluvian, Diocletian.

All the gig was like a preparation for something that in the end didn’t came. All the song-structures, breaks, all those crooning and droning in the songs promised for something to come. I don’t know, a good riff, a cathartic theme, something, but the cleaning fire never came. Just the end of the world and nothing more. The music of Malthusian seems to me like some post-war metal, it has this primordial vibe mixed with the noise of the apocalypse, a mixing of the old with the new, a crossing between Blasphemy and Neurosis, but the themes weren’t convincing for me, though I made a research on them before I came to the gig.

NEGATIVE PLANE

3 people were able to induce a trance-like state for the next 80 minutes or something.

From the first notes, the magic was there and I let myself absorbed into this dreamlike experience. Magic, pure bliss, catharsis, cleansing, gooseflesh, these are the clichés to describe this ritual. Nameless Void just walked in with his old Gibson and made a tour-de-force of the history of metal and not just. All the tunes flowing out of his instrument were like spells coming from a higher divinity.

Negative Plane is not just a black metal band. Their music incoporate elements from the essential metal bands like Black Sabbath (those Iommmi-like note-stretchings), Judas Priest (the classic elegance of some of the riffs), old  school black metal like Tormentor (those  chaotic thrash/black riffs and the sudden changes) and also some goth and deathrock, maybe some Fields of the Nephilim, or even The Southern Death Cult and Christian Death. Their music can be blurry, atmospheric, dreamlike, hazy, but never unfocused.

There’s  great songwriting in this band, Edward Miller is the Selim Lemouchi of black metal, the man who knows all the magical chords, all the secrets and the most important: the glue. The music is not just riffs and themes throw-in to bang to, but something more elevated, like a symphony. This is where the H.P. Lovecraft affinity comes in somehow. H.P. Lovecraft  was the genius and humble man, patiently constructing his haunting art from small puzzles, just like these guys.  

Negative Plane is not a music you can get easily into to, but once you’re in, you are under the spell, and the magic is even more effective experienced live.

Basically, 3 men making heavy metal (or black metal, as you wish) without any compromise. There is no band who can compete with Negative Plane, because there are simply no other similar bands on the planet up to this day, they are above genres and trends.

An amazing night, something to remember.

Written by Rob,

July 2015