SELF-EXTINCTION BY PABLO SELNIK AND ÀLEX REVIRIEGO
Inhumankind is a project by Pablo Selnik (flute) and Àlex Reviriego (double bass), two of the most active, original and fearless musicians on the Barcelona scene. After several years working on projects of such diverse styles as modern jazz, metal, contemporary composition or drone, and being key members of the free improvised sessions from the Catalan capital, they join forces in the pursuance of impossible music. Shapeless phrasings, savage riffs, polyrhythms beyond logic… crowned by melodies of sinister and burning beauty. A duo that in its inhumanity creates a new concept of what’s human.
On 2018 they release their first album “Self-Extinction”, produced by Colin Marston, published by the Italian record label I, Voidhanger, one of the international’s black avantgarde references today. With unanimous applauses from specialized critics and being selected for appearing on the most outstanding band’s album of the year on Can This Even Be Called Music?, and being part of the book “Masterpieces, the Best artworks of 2018”, by Heavy Music Artwork.
“Existing at the nexus of modern, classical music and extreme metal, Inhumankind has a completely unique sound. Aggressively played flute, acoustic bass, and occasional vocals are excellently employed to create compositions that are simultaneously sparse and complicated, awkward and confident. This is one of the most original albums to come across my desk in quite some time!” Colin Marston (Gorguts, Krallice, Dysrhythmia, Behold…the Arctopus)
We’re a duo composed of flute and double-bass. We’re two musicians from Barcelona, involved in many projects of stylistic wide range, covering from contemporary music to free-improvisation, avant-garde jazz, noise/drone etc. We have been working together in many circumstances and once I told Alex, why don’t we engage in a black metal acoustic duo? We started off a Darkthrone cover, and since then we’ve built our own sound, personality and essence.
It’s hard for us to talk about styles because that’s precisally what we want to break through, by pushing the borders of what we conceive as style, or as the music itself. It’s the way to go further. There’s a lot of intricate riffs in the vein of technical death metal bands that I love, from Death to Cryptopsy, and brutal death old-school ones like Cannibal Corpse or Suffocation, or even avant-thrash bands like Voivod or Martyr.
There’s a lot of the black metal atmosphere we’ve been listening since we were kids. From Mayhem and the BM first wave to more avant stuff, like Fleurety or Deathspell Omega. There’s a very strong influence in terms of the composition of the atonalism and serialism of the S.XX classical composers, from Varèse to Xenakis as well as a treatment of the intervallic range close to Mingus, Dolhpy and the more conceptual jazz. In terms of intensity, there’s a lot of late Coltrane and the classical free-jazz blowers from Albert Ayler to Brötzmann. Eventually, all I’ve mentioned and plenty more compose our audiophile universe, but we are not pretending to manifest literally any of that music in our own.
In this record, we talk about some of the darkness inside any of us and the manifestation of it through human history in a very open way. Letting those who may have the knowledge get those occult references. The rest’s be just nice poetry. Music is our first and last goal. We’re not pretending to do any kind of proselytism, or telling people what to think or to do. I usually talk about music in general, not metal specifically. Of course, is a genre I love, and it’s always good to know the history and the evolution of it, but labelling art to a concrete aesthetics and cliches is the best way to limit art itself. By saying that, I mean that music is a tool.
As a tool is no subjected to any moral, is the way people uses it that makes it dangerous or not. Another point of view could be, dangerous for who?
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/self-extinction
