Send "Shining " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Altpress |
 Norway's Shining mix industrial and metal into an unholy screech that takes elements from Nine Inch Nails' Broken EP, Meshuggah's Nothing and the collected works of Magma and King Crimson (this album includes a hellish version of KC's "21st Century Schizoid Man"), plus ultra-distorted, shrieking vocals and skronking saxophone. It's a major leap into the abyss for the band; their last two discs, 2007's Grindstone and 2005's In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster, had their ferocious moments, but there were stretches of gentle, jazzy melody, too. Blackjazz, by contrast, is fierce and unrelenting, a slavering beast of an album with the complexity and dissonance of the Flying Luttenbachers and the head-down intensity of upstate New York ultra-power trio Borbetomagus. Absolutely not for the faint of heart--or people with cranky neighbors. (THE END) Phil Freeman...full text |
| Noripcord |
| Though “progressive” metal bands seem to be running rampant anymore, few carry the free jazz sophistication of Norway quartet, Shining, their double-dutch whirlwind of industrial cacophony and Zappa-esque musical deviation at times blurring the line between rupture and rapture. Their last album, Grindstone, demonstrated the sort of off-kilter genius you rarely discover because you don’t know where to find it, or what to call it, the album’s calculating eclecticism as chaotic as an arbitrarily conceived mix tape. With their new album, Blackjazz, Shining keeps their offerings confined to a certain aesthetic, which is basically that of its title. The album is a spiraling trauma, perfect for obsessive compulsives that hate being slaves to their own "ordered" environment. For how thick the acid flows throughout Blackjazz, the music is disciplined: allowed to run rampant for periods of time before being reeled back to its former gloriousness of synthesized rage and deadly sonic eruption. The only time the music really crumbles is during its more than appropriate rendition of King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, whose components seem littered throughout Blackjazz like tiny bits of jagged wisdom. No song exhibits said inspiration more than Fisheye, whose midway saxophone almost mimics Crimson’s Schizoid breakdown, though Shining’s variation on the theme motors like factory noise: Steady, consistent, tireless. It would be easy to liken Madness and the Damage Done to something along the lines of NIN or Rammstein, but the frantic almost out-of-hand construct is more brutal than either group is known to be. Trent’s had his moments, but whatever dark corner of his brain bred The Downward Spiral, Blackjazz has upped the ante on the aesthetics of caustic industrial bloodlust, at least from a surface standpoint. (Just a note: I do find it interesting that Shining found a way to pose the “ININ” of their band name in an almost familiar way to Reznor’s “NIN”… just a thought.) Aside from the shrieking vocal assault of singer, Jørgen Munkeby, there’s an odd correlation between 90s alt-industrial nostalgia, free jazz liberty and John Carpenter-sized synthetic doom. One thing about Shining, and this holds true on Grindstone, is that their love of sci-fi apocalyptic synthesizer screams a childhood remembrance of the future sounds of yesteryear. The sound is quaint, but treated with such a heavy exactness and sinister disposition that it takes on a life of its own. Exit Sun and Blackjazz Deathtrance both exemplify this point, generating restlessness and dark tension while relying on this electrified mode of conveyance. ...full text |
| Popmatters |
| The difference between Shining the live act and what you hear from the band on record can be vast at times. In concert, the Norwegians are an absolutely formidable, visceral presence, hammering out an astonishing blend of progressive rock, extreme metal, and free jazz. On the other hand, on such superb albums as 2005’s In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will be a Monster and 2007’s Grindstone, it’s a different story, the aforementioned influences still present, but often offset by a much more experimental, ambient, almost introspective quality that can be just as disarming, especially if you see them live before hearing them on record. For all the wonderful unpredictability of their wildly eclectic studio work, Shining’s more aggressive, immediate fare (“Goretex Weather Report”, “In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster”) does turn out to be their greatest strength, the kind of extreme music hybrid that most technically oriented metal bands wish they could pull off but never know fully how. And judging by the undeniable power of the band’s live presence, it certainly doesn’t seem unrealistic to expect them to take things into even more extreme territory on subsequent releases. So it comes as no surprise that their fourth full-length is heavier than anything the band has put out to date. What does take us aback, though, is just how ferocious the aptly named Blackjazz truly is. All the elements that drew people to Shining in the past are still present, as band leader/guitarist/saxophonist/vocalist Jørgen Munkeby continues to mine the works of Frank Zappa, King Crimson, and Ornette Coleman with reckless abandon, but what’s most prominent, and what hits us in the face on this album is the careening math metal madness of “The Madness and the Damage Done”. Starting off with a psychotic, heart-pounding riff more indebted to Genghis Tron, the Dillinger Escape Plan, and the Fucking Champs, the track shifts from menacing movements reminiscent of the Jesus Lizard to hyperkinetic keyboard and guitar shredding that will remind some of Ocrilim, the climaxes mastered so loud it’s unsettling. Munkeby follows suit with his most vitriolic vocal performance to date, delivering a blunt, grindcore-like scream instead of his more idiosyncratic melodic singing from past records....full text |
Shining lyrics
