Have you ever stubbed your toe and then cursed so violently that you accidentally opened a portal to an alternate universe where it’s always raining and everyone scowls at you like you owe their grandmother money? If so: congratulations! You might just be a member of the Finnish power trio Ligation. These frowny friends hold current or former affiliations with such acts as Profetus (slow), Candy Cane (weird), Waste of Space Orchestra (space), Sum of R (kraut), Pus (no idea, but probably not R&B?), and many more, a fact which is interesting only insofar as it hints at Ligation’s commitment to pulling in whatever tools they need to get the job done.
The album opens with a title track that wastes no time showing its moves – a greasy, swaggering riff that swings right into a stomp. Things quickly go sideways, though, with a bass and phlegm bridge and a studio-fucked outro. In under 2.5 minutes, they’ve served up a complex broth with tasting notes of death metal, sludge, noise rock, and just plain ol’ noise. “Eruption” pulls into the station with a fair bit of black ‘n roll energy (think Satyricon’s “Fuel for Hatred”), while “Turmoil in Everest” sports a bass line so dripping with the sick spread of crude oil you wouldn’t be surprised to find some hobbled waterfowl crammed between the strings.
After Gods exists in a space that you might call “cozy antagonism,” which I find immediately appealing and satisfying. Things are scuzzy and nasty and noisy and serious, but it never feels like the band is taking itself too seriously. On “Obscure Flame,” Ligation chugs and wallops along gleefully, eventually flipping from stop-start staccato to a simple two-step that smells like Obituary at their knuckle-draggingest. The vaguely industrialized stomp that opens “Eruption,” meanwhile, feels akin to Germany’s Valborg. A decent local comparison for Ligation on both the fun and filth fronts is Ride for Revenge, but I also find myself occasionally thinking of Mistress’s In Disgust We Trust and Malconfort’s Humanism. As it ever was and should be, however, your personal cantankerous signposts will differ.
The ten-minute closer “Reflection” churns in a sparse, haunting space that opens a little like Khanate by way of the unsettling strings of the soundtrack to Kubrick’s 2001. The saxophone that joins for the song’s last third wails and shrieks, but gradually merges with guitar feedback, cymbal treble, and other unrecognizable elements to become a squall that vibrates some howling, anti-cosmic string. It’s powerful, harrowing, non-condescendingly ritualistic stuff.
And perhaps best of all? Think about Slayer’s Reign in Blood, Deicide’s Legion, Aura Noir’s The Merciless… Ligation’s tantalizing debut doesn’t sound a single blessed thing like any of those albums, but just like each of them, it respects the listener enough to get in, cause maximum eardrum disrespect, and get out. The final three tracks on After Gods collect Ligation’s side of earlier splits with Gravavgrav and Hail Conjurer, respectively. Come for the fresh meat, stay for the root cellar, hail and kill. Fine Finnish fun for (f)everyone!
