Review: Exlibris - Aftereal
By Marc Blanc, Staff Writer
Rating: 2/10
[Metal Mind Productions; 2015]
Key Track: “Omega Point”
Exlibris is not the only European metal band to use that name. They are not the best band to use that name, either. In the Netherlands, Ex Libris (note the spacing) plays a fascinating yet hardly listenable fusion of opera and prog-metal. The Exlibris of focus today, a power metal clan from Poland, has a less baffling sound, but are an infinitely worse band--worse than “hardly listenable.”
Twelve tedious tracks of Euro-prog blended with long dead hair metal, and aha!--Therein lies the one remarkable molecule of Exlibris’ third record--it flaunts a complete lack of inspiration, which implores from the listener not only intense frustration, but an inescapable sense of futility.
Nothing about the music on Aftereal transcends stock power metal. Everything one would expect to hear from an album with a cosmic worm on its cover is present; perpetual double-bass blasts, chugging guitars interrupted incessantly by masturbatory solos, a cheesy synth thrown in on the producer’s presumed insistence for some variety. There is nothing else.
Vocalist Krzysztof Sokolowski’s online biography says he discovered his Queen and Iron Maiden tapes in his youth, and his latest record says he has yet to graduate from that stage. While the guitars behind him possess some strain of progressive harmonics, Sokolowski’s voice ought to be fossilized. Following all great guitar heroes before him, he shouts for the entirety of LP, which is personally offensive. He is like the junior high kid boasting about mediocre basketball skills--he sure is loud and shrill enough with such Stallone-ready lines as, “I’m not afraid of falling / So push me close to the edge, yeah-hea, heaaa.”
A point is given for technical prowess. Exlibris can play fast, especially on the invigorating “Omega Point,” and those boys sure can flounder around a scale. Ultimately, though, all they’re doing is straining their fingers. Technical ability is simply a means to an end--a tool to use in order to achieve a vision; it is not a vision on its own. Time signature, vocal style, song structure--all are safe from being pushed here. Everything just sounds like it was written for a cartoon lampooning the ‘80s than the library of a serious metalhead.
One could at least be enthralled, as well as amused, when listening to that Dutch opera-metal band. Aftereal offers nothing to be intrigued by or to laugh at. Like an introduction to sociology class, it is neither challenging nor fun and will give an intelligent listener more questions than answers: What does Aftereal mean? Who is paying attention to this? If this record has no effect on greater humanity, does it truly exist?
Surely, the album will one day be forgotten, aside from the niche listener of Polish power metal. Think of Aftereal as a singular event that will quickly fade away without making any long-term effect on anyone, which is the likely outcome. It might as well not exist at all.
Milan Kundera outlined this idea in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The Polish power metal band Exlibris has succeeded in being an example of the concept, and their record Aftereal is triumphant only in making the writer wonder about how futile his actions are. Although mediocre, this record is still a piece of art. If a hard-labored piece of art will one day mean nothing, how many things is the average person doing that mean nothing? Not the most enjoyable listening experience.
