Dysnerved - Man in the Middle
Why are you in the middle? Pick a side.
I don’t know how true it rings for other music reviewers, but I’ve had some releases I’d describe as “white whales”. They’re things I want to review, but for a variety of reasons, I just can’t get around to them. Be it a lack of inspiration, getting distracted by other things that caught my eye, or just forgetting altogether, they flutter at the edge of memory, a thought as innocuous as that of drinking water. Dysnerved, and their debut, Man in the Middle is one such case for me. A release that I’ve been aware of and listening to intermittently since I saw them open for Groza back in 2022, it’s been in a post-hiatus “to review” list since I started writing again in 2024. Turns out, I never did write about it, and it’s been taunting me in the years since. Time and time again I’ve been listening to it in preparation to write about it, and it’s high time I put it to rest.
Dysnerved operates within the field of dissonant death metal, where the notion of coherent riffing and linear songwriting is frowned upon by a large majority of the bands in the style, but with one major caveat: these songs are straightforward. Strange, I know. Although the recording is all-around unfriendly and rife with dissonance, each composition is quite compact, and the band revisits established motifs throughout their duration. The tight construction of “Behemoth Inside”, whose violent outbursts are offset by pounding chords interlaced with some ringing guitar lines, and the slithering “Us”, make for dense songs that aren’t labyrinthine at the expense of memorability. Spidery as the fretwork might be, it’s revisited often enough so as to provide a thread to follow from beginning to end.
The sonic aspect of the record is also worth noting, as it manages to capture the shit-brown hellscape on the cover perfectly. It’s crisp, yet completely cold, all the details laid bare for us to appreciate. It has a rather industrial feel to it, and the lopsided mid-paced riffing that permeates the record definitely manages to conjure up a feeling of desolation, a slow trudge through a society that pays little mind to the individual. Admittedly, it does lack a bit of force, as the drumkit sounds a little flaccid and digital, particularly the snare, whereas the guitars are a touch too clinical and lacking in volume. Even the vocals exist on a pendulum, varied as they might be, for the raspier screaming oftentimes feels strained and neutered, whereas the growls are appropriately thick and percussive. It’s unfortunate that the textural aspects of the music don’t quite do justice to the urban decay that lays at the heart of their work, since it’s something I find myself sympathising with, given that I live in the city the quartet is based in.
This is all well and good, but would you believe me that despite all the listens I willingly gave to this album, all of them enjoyable to some degree, it actually managed to aggravate the shit out of me? As I was going through the note-taking process that precedes all of these reviews, it dawned on me that Man in the Middle is staggered. The aforementioned mid-paced riffing, originally trance-like, sucked the soul out of me over the course of the album’s 33-minute runtime, and it made what was up until that point a very breezy listen an unending trudge with no end in sight. Tracks like “Aphophenia”, whose measured churn and noisy melodies were originally gripping, gradually began to meander, and my patience along with it. Ditto for the preceding “Trail to the Void”, an instrumental that well and truly trails off, its build-up not measuring to much in the end.
It always sucks when I have to try explaining intangibles when reviewing music, but it’s a natural inevitability of interacting and talking about art, since emotions can only be given so much form through text. But it well and truly boggles the mind that all the negativity contained in the previous paragraph was the product of a single listen, because when I put on the album again during the process of writing this review, I actually found myself enjoying it again. I find myself enjoying the well-rounded nature of tracks like “Daily Routine of a Hollow Mind”, where all of the band’s tricks manage to coalesce into one of the densest songs here, running the gamut through fast and slow riffs, ringing arpeggios, and culminating in a climax that crashes back to the track’s beginning. And yet, a single listen, where the only differing factor was having a pen and paper laid out in front of me, cast a shadow over 3-odd years of listening to this album. It’s hard to say whether all this is the album’s fault, or my frustrations with writing this review coming to the forefront. Ultimately, the visceral frustration I feel has as much to do with the music as it does with my being a reviewer. The desire to write oftentimes overwhelms my appreciation (or lack thereof) for a given piece of music, and having to cover something that at some point has fulfilled all of the criteria mentioned on the prologue means that I will be subjected to mood swings regarding said work, which will make themselves known at some point. It sucks, but it’s impossible to judge art based on its own merits, and this is one case that hammers that point home for me.
Much like Ahab, finally catching up to my white whale didn’t really net me the joy and relief I wish it had, yet I find myself rather at peace with having written this review. I don’t truly know if I like Man in the Middle, despite having spent so much time with it. Part of me wants to believe that I’ll keep on revisiting it, despite its imperfections, like a moth to a flame, yet another is more than content with the prospect of leaving it behind after all the frustration it has caused me. Do I think it’s worth a listen? Absolutely, it does have a character of its own that could very well endear itself to fans of off-kilter extreme metal. Can I guarantee that you’ll like it in the long-term? Not really. If you’re anything like me though, you’ll come back to it, always when you least expect it.
Highlights: Behemoth Inside, Daily Routine of a Hollow Mind, Us
Dysnerved operates within the field of dissonant death metal, where the notion of coherent riffing and linear songwriting is frowned upon by a large majority of the bands in the style, but with one major caveat: these songs are straightforward. Strange, I know. Although the recording is all-around unfriendly and rife with dissonance, each composition is quite compact, and the band revisits established motifs throughout their duration. The tight construction of “Behemoth Inside”, whose violent outbursts are offset by pounding chords interlaced with some ringing guitar lines, and the slithering “Us”, make for dense songs that aren’t labyrinthine at the expense of memorability. Spidery as the fretwork might be, it’s revisited often enough so as to provide a thread to follow from beginning to end.
The sonic aspect of the record is also worth noting, as it manages to capture the shit-brown hellscape on the cover perfectly. It’s crisp, yet completely cold, all the details laid bare for us to appreciate. It has a rather industrial feel to it, and the lopsided mid-paced riffing that permeates the record definitely manages to conjure up a feeling of desolation, a slow trudge through a society that pays little mind to the individual. Admittedly, it does lack a bit of force, as the drumkit sounds a little flaccid and digital, particularly the snare, whereas the guitars are a touch too clinical and lacking in volume. Even the vocals exist on a pendulum, varied as they might be, for the raspier screaming oftentimes feels strained and neutered, whereas the growls are appropriately thick and percussive. It’s unfortunate that the textural aspects of the music don’t quite do justice to the urban decay that lays at the heart of their work, since it’s something I find myself sympathising with, given that I live in the city the quartet is based in.
This is all well and good, but would you believe me that despite all the listens I willingly gave to this album, all of them enjoyable to some degree, it actually managed to aggravate the shit out of me? As I was going through the note-taking process that precedes all of these reviews, it dawned on me that Man in the Middle is staggered. The aforementioned mid-paced riffing, originally trance-like, sucked the soul out of me over the course of the album’s 33-minute runtime, and it made what was up until that point a very breezy listen an unending trudge with no end in sight. Tracks like “Aphophenia”, whose measured churn and noisy melodies were originally gripping, gradually began to meander, and my patience along with it. Ditto for the preceding “Trail to the Void”, an instrumental that well and truly trails off, its build-up not measuring to much in the end.
It always sucks when I have to try explaining intangibles when reviewing music, but it’s a natural inevitability of interacting and talking about art, since emotions can only be given so much form through text. But it well and truly boggles the mind that all the negativity contained in the previous paragraph was the product of a single listen, because when I put on the album again during the process of writing this review, I actually found myself enjoying it again. I find myself enjoying the well-rounded nature of tracks like “Daily Routine of a Hollow Mind”, where all of the band’s tricks manage to coalesce into one of the densest songs here, running the gamut through fast and slow riffs, ringing arpeggios, and culminating in a climax that crashes back to the track’s beginning. And yet, a single listen, where the only differing factor was having a pen and paper laid out in front of me, cast a shadow over 3-odd years of listening to this album. It’s hard to say whether all this is the album’s fault, or my frustrations with writing this review coming to the forefront. Ultimately, the visceral frustration I feel has as much to do with the music as it does with my being a reviewer. The desire to write oftentimes overwhelms my appreciation (or lack thereof) for a given piece of music, and having to cover something that at some point has fulfilled all of the criteria mentioned on the prologue means that I will be subjected to mood swings regarding said work, which will make themselves known at some point. It sucks, but it’s impossible to judge art based on its own merits, and this is one case that hammers that point home for me.
Much like Ahab, finally catching up to my white whale didn’t really net me the joy and relief I wish it had, yet I find myself rather at peace with having written this review. I don’t truly know if I like Man in the Middle, despite having spent so much time with it. Part of me wants to believe that I’ll keep on revisiting it, despite its imperfections, like a moth to a flame, yet another is more than content with the prospect of leaving it behind after all the frustration it has caused me. Do I think it’s worth a listen? Absolutely, it does have a character of its own that could very well endear itself to fans of off-kilter extreme metal. Can I guarantee that you’ll like it in the long-term? Not really. If you’re anything like me though, you’ll come back to it, always when you least expect it.
Highlights: Behemoth Inside, Daily Routine of a Hollow Mind, Us
Rating: 65%
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