I was prepared for cringe and hoped at least for a chuckle. But Kerberos reminded me of the important life lesson that there are no guilty pleasures, only pleasures.
Often it’s just a couple of keywords or the cover artwork which make me decide to give an artist I haven’t heard of a chance. And in case of this Swiss group I admittedly did it for the wrong reasons. The combination of Symphonic Metal - which in most cases is a rather miss and miss genre for me - with the preview of a seemingly low-budget LARP style video and a fantasy cover artwork that seems to depict a scene from the same world as Fates Warning’s infamous Night On Bröcken all pointed at the possibility of a funnily overachieving kitsch fest.
And while their videos indeed have a bit of clumsy, almost trashy charme and their music certainly doesn’t shy away from excessive gestures, Kerberos own what they’re doing and deliver it in a stunning quality on their new mini album.
The quartet’s roots lie in Death Metal and you’ll still hear a lot of the genre’s trademarks like blasting Floridian riffs, double bass attacks and different flavours of harsh vocals here. Beyond that the sound expands towards Progressive Metal with a very unapologetically swaggering guitar, fitting that old Metal cliché of being indecisive between nerding out about Classical influences and impressing the chicks. Indeed the band claims that all five tracks are explicitly inspired by Baroque era composers - and cembalo and organ alone make sure that you won’t miss it. Of course this is where all the aesthetically dangerous elements come in, which have become dreaded staples of European Power Metal: the way too sweetish and on the nose Symphonic Pirates of the Carribean sauce, the female Opera singer, the overloaded production.
Yes, Kerberos are going for all of this, with a male/female vocal duo (also including the male Opera counterpart), a whole choir, a string quartet. And there are passages here and there which would make me run away as fast as I possibly could if they represented the whole album. But somehow, while I’m trying so hard to roll my eyes, they are just doubling down on everything with their more is more attitude - yet against all odds I can’t help but just enjoy it. And with the right references I get why: A lot of this could be an Extreme Metal version of Arjen Lucassen’s Ayreon, but also Martin Schirenc’s Hollenthon with actual Classical instrumentation instead of samples - or even Igorrr without all the Electronic and super silly stuff. Thinking about it this way - why did I even doubt this band?
The only thing Kerberos are economizing is total playing time, as Apostle To The Malevolent doesn’t even last thirty minutes. But given how much is happening that’s maybe a part of why this release actually works, since this music is almost constantly in a mode of exorbitance and would probably be weaker if its ideas were stretched over a longer period. This way however the album is safely condensed to a short and (sometimes offensively) sweet, very coherent experience.
What seems a little off concept yet actually doesn’t hurt at all are the lyrics, which surprisingly don’t deal with Swiss fairy tales or any other sword and sorcery lore, yet focus on modern themes like mental health, trauma or capitalist critique. Surely an unexpected recontextualization, but one which works just fine.
So there you have it: Be free to approach Kerberos as cynical as I did! Maybe you’ll end up giving your comfort zone an equally big middle finger.
