Reign Destroyer, the first recording of appreciable length from Bay Area black/death outfit Samiarus, has a title that skews chaotically from aspirational anarchism (destroy the thing that reigns!) to something more chillingly authoritarian (get out there and reign, you destroyer!). The confusion suits the sort of black/death the band generates, skirting the boundaries of war metal’s mechanical dissonance (Marinetti-style Futurism, anyone?) and grindcore’s dissonant mechanisms. It’s all further inflamed by song titles like “New Iron Age” and “Crushed by Inferior.” Is this a half-baked revolutionary atavism or an assertion of Hun-style imperial intent?
Since Samiarus make a hugely ugly and ruthlessly violent variety of underground metal, it seems appropriate to ask: Why choose? On exclusively sonic terms, the record is very, very good, if you are into this sort of thing. The songs stomp and clatter, chunky riffs coated in a residue of tinny reverb. The vocals of Mattia Alagna (the Oakland-by-way-of-Italy miscreant who also makes noises for doom-metal standouts Abstracter and industrial metal nasties Isolant) gurgle and growl with near-emetic abandon. “Eradicating Wind” is perhaps the most focused dose of destructive aggressiveness on the tape, a blasting, scathing apparatus left running on high. There’s even a pretty good guitar solo.
If we want to make greater sense of the semiotics accompanying this alarming noise, we might note that Samiarus is the anglicized version of the Arabic word for one of the fallen angels of Abrahamic myth—the Hebrew is anglicized as Samyaza. He appears in the apocryphal Book of Enoch as one of the Watchers who procreated with humans, producing the Nephilim. Deep cuts from the assorted myths that sprang up on the margins of Judaism and Christianity, and black metal bands that really mean it tend to be fond of those suppressed texts. There are various renditions of rebellion to be mined there: against the temple and church authorities who assembled the official books of worship and, of course, against god.
Likely Samiarus intends an additional finger in the eye of Western authority by drawing on the Arabic. Fallen angels come in all kinds of shapes and ideologically charged articulations. It’s somewhat interesting to consider the condition of the fallen in relation to MAGA’s embrace of their flawed vessel, whose redemptive power seems indexed to varieties of negation: contempt, cruelty, vitriol, vainglory. For reasons that surpass understanding, that vessel projects his poisonous affect while dancing to “YMCA.” But it might be semi-entertaining to see how a rally crowd would react to “Crushed by Inferior.” It’s not a bad soundtrack for all the accumulating ressentiment churning away in the national imaginary. That’s not good news, mind you. Almost makes you want to bring in the huns.
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