Dying Messiah - The Church Of The Selfish

It is very interesting that Dying Messiah has as their first “blog” at myspace their top 10 influencing albums. They list No. 1 as Metallica’s And Justice for All, No. 5 as Cannibal Corpse’s Eaten Back to Life, and The Ramones’ Self Titled album holds the No. 10 spot. Why do I think this is interesting? Because the band is really asking its listeners, intentionally or unintentionally, to judge it according to criteria and that criteria can be simultaneously freeing to the band…or damaging. In Dying Messiah’s case, it’s freeing because they are artier and black metal creative than any of the bands they mentioned. I am surprised Dying Messiah did not mention Darkthrone on their list because they are more akin to them than any of the mentioned bands. Dying Messiah’s The Church of the Selfish is not derivative in any way, but they play smooth and heavy like something between Darkthrone and Keep of Kalessin. In other words, if the band is honest in relaying these bands of influence, then they have in fact, to refer to the great literary critic Harold Bloom, risen above the Anxiety of Influence.

It is not that Dying Messiah is in fact a straight black metal band, but that genre does in fact leave some real room for evil and creativity in a way that no other metal subgenre does. At least according to the guys in Ulver who have played with black metal and have talked about what they like about it. In Dying Messiah’s case, they growl like something from the days of early Between the Buried and Me, which to me specifically marks DM as absolutely an American Metal band. I say this as a compliment because one has roots and one has variations and all these play a factor in building the awesome nuances of the international metal scene. I just think that the squeals of guitar in tracks like “Angel in Black” and the speedy thrash riffs are lower in the mix around the vocals and the guitars are cleaner than any “normal” Euro black metaler would do, except maybe Naglfar (and I for one even throw a question at that categorization of them), who plays very loud with neat production value. Dying Messiah does not play as loudly as Naglfar and their production value is certainly not as high, an observation that checks the box next to “black metal.”


Then there is the title track, “The Church of the Selfish.” This track is filled with death metal vocals that carry well over the keyboard laden melancholy metal that reminds me so much of some seconds found in CDs by Xasthur and Striborg. But that same song also blasts out and riffs along lines that are much closer to death metal than black metal or suicide metal. I get the impression that Dying Messiah is not just playing guitar and playing fast metal, but also antagonizing metal itself (something I like to see). This of course brings up The Anxiety of Influence again. Dying Messiah seems to embrace an always-on metal artistry that, like Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, struggles against the lazy way of metal cliché. Nietzsche would not speak in clichés and Dying Messiah does not either. I recommend checking out The Church of the Selfish.

1. The Breeding Of Ignorance
2. The Weak Shall Inherit Nothing
3. Heretic Jesus
4. Angel In Black
5. The Church Of The Selfish
6. Hour Of Darkness
7. Scars Of Failure
8. We're Only Equal In The Grave
9. Thin Out The Numbers
Self released
Reviewer: Jesse
Feb 26, 2009

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