From Innocence to Perversity

The French Black Metal scene during the last decade has grown a lot and has many good bands or quite good releases to show. Kosmos is an one-man band which was formed in 2010 and the full length album “From Innocence to Perversity” is their first release. The album was released in April of 2012 and it contains nine compositions, two of which are instrumental tracks, of forty minutes total duration. Musically, the band presents a fast, violent Black Metal with some slow, depressive passages.

The riffs mainly are fast, they are based in disharmonic melodies in order to pass to the listener that heavy feeling of fear and agony that the band wants to create. Apart from that, we find some fast, heavy riffs which reminds of Death Metal riffing. The tracks are not too big concerning their duration, about four to five minutes each, but on one hand their structure isn’t good, on the other hand the riffs are boring and repetitive. So the tracks, although they have a normal length, they are tedious and boring, they can’t create feelings nor images to the listener’s mind who has no reason to go on listening to the album.

The guitars are quite distorted while they are somehow weak, without passion and quite much uncertainty in their playing. The bass sounds quite loud, filling the sound well. The drums are satisfying, they play with ease and they offer certainty to the listener, something that is missing from the guitars, while their lines are good but doing just the basics. The vocals are harsh and whispering Black Metal vocals which in many parts remind me of the voice of Demoncy. The production is very bassy and the sound comes out quite dirty. Concerning the mix, while every instrument can be heard clearly, especially the drums, they don’t sound connected with each other so the compositions don’t have the depth that they should have. The lyrics are written in English but they are not contained in the promo that I received and I don’t know what they refer to.

So in a scene so big and with so many releases as that of France it is expected to exist also many bad releases. The album of Kosmos is one of those bad albums. It is not only the boring riffs, the bad sound or the weak guitars, it is also that lack of the personal element and of creativity which makes a band special even if its sound is terrible. I didn’t like “From Innocence to Perversity” and surely I won’t try to listen to it again. Don’t even get in trouble listening to it, prefer something else.