Does a choir made up entirely of metal singers sound familiar? In 2012, a group from Bandung, a West Javanese city in Indonesia, was the first to do so. Little-known internationally, the group is finally stepping out of the shadows with an a cappella album distributed for the European market.
Founded by classically trained composer Robi Rusdiana, this ensemble of eight metal singers was founded to push the expressive limits of vocal techniques associated with metal music. Decontextualized, these extreme voices are stripped bare in an album compiling various recordings of short works and excerpts from longer works, spanning the range of commissions and projects the group created between 2013 and 2020. A true showcase of what Ensemble Tikoro can do, Hell Chamber is an hour-long album running the full palette of extended imaginable techniques: murmurs, breath, sound effects, roars, throat singing, complaints, Sundanese conversations, onomatopoeia and free exploration of traditional chants. The result is a series of surprising textures, whose tone easily shifts from playful to serious. The a capella aspect of these compositions forces us to listen to and appreciate these voices for their timbres and combinatory possibilities, far removed from the frontal role these techniques play in a metal band context.
Hell Chamber surprises with its diversity. This is what keeps the album so interesting over its entire duration. Nevertheless, the opus remains a first discographic stone. One imagines that future releases will be more ambitious in conceptual terms, and with greater musical cohesion from one track to the other. Be that as it may, this is a truly original proposition that deserves to fall into every good ear, whether you like metal or not.
