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It took twelve years for J. Schizoid to follow up his last album All Things Are Connected, but here we are with the third full-length from this Canadian speedcore/black metal outfit, a ferocious sixteen song blast of pounding distorted beats, icy black metal guitars and fractured electronics from this former member of cult Canadian black metallers (and early Profound Lore signing) Dead Of Winter. The first collection of new Schizoid material since 2000, The Next Extreme picks right up where the last album left off, unleashing barbaric, pounding programmed drums that mercilessly jackhammer at your skull while Schizoid’s blackened shriek and droning, primitive black metal riffs and layered electronic noise soaks through the harsh, static-choked assault. It’s what the gabber/speedcore parts of Morbid Angel’s Illud Divinum Insanus should have sounded like, stripped of any candy-raver bullshit or nu-metal-isms.
The disc opens with a sample from Videodrome, Debbie Harry’s drowsy purr introducing the blazing breakcore of the title track as the album revs up its rampant anti-authoritarian, anarchic spite. Schizoid’s stuff isn’t the monotonous blastfest that you might get from a lot of albums that combine gabber, breakcore and black/death metal elements; while every song is powered by distorted, aggressive kick drums, the songs are constantly contorting into spasmodic, jagged forms, veering from weird skittering broken rhythms to ultra-crushing industrial beats and harsh metallic clank, sometimes dropping the pounding beats for a moment as it shifts into sinister, chirpy 8-bit melodies or some full-on industrialized black metal. This is all harsh frostbitten riffage and horrific sample-collages, heavy-duty repetitive rhythms laced with distorted, vicious breakbeats on tracks like “Real Evil” or the skittering insectile rhythms and weird beat breakdowns of “Physical Is The Illusion”. Schizoid’s digital hardcore/Atari Teenage Riot influences become more apparent as The Next Extreme progresses, and the album features a ton of guest musicians who help out with vocals on almost every track; I’m not familiar with most of the names on here, but there’s a couple of known quantities from the extreme breakcore / speedcore scene like UK maniacs Drugzilla.
It’s still basically the same sound as Schizoid’s older material, and while this probably wouldn’t win over any black metal fans who already have an aversion to electronic / extreme techno influences in their music, hardcore necro-techno junkies like myself who LOVE stuff like Gorgonea Prima, Aborym, Blacklodge, newer Dødheimsgard, Neo Inferno 262, Alien Deviant Circus and yes, even Illud Divinum Insanus will probably dig Schizoid’s relentless, often schizophrenic sonic attack.
Released in digipack packaging in a limited edition of five hundred copies.
SCHIZOID 