Music

This mysterious genre-blender mixes black metal and hip-hop

by Jeremy Mersereau

We’ve all seen our share of horrible genre crossover attempts, and the vast majority are completely awful. From electroswing to Gangstagrass and of course, the song that shall not be named, genre splicing is a risky proposition that carries with it an, oh, let’s be generous and say only a 97.4% chance of failure.

Two genres that have historically resisted being blended together into some ungodly sonic mess have been black metal and hip-hop, which might have something to do with both fanbases being extremely preoccupied with the realness and purity of their respective cultures. Those who have tried to alter/water down the sounds have traditionally not been let off lightly. To be fair though, Liturgy does suck.

Enter: Romantic, a seemingly one-man attempt to merge corpse paint with crunk. It’s… something, alright. Listening to the mysterious artist from Beacon, New York, you’d be forgiven for thinking you  were listening to some third-rate witch house circa 2011, but even Salem and co. never had the audacity to attempt to weld black metal shrieks to their tinny, underproduced beats, or tried to record vocals through some kind of potato like Romantic apparently does.

Romantic’s sole Bandcamp release, AUTUM/NIL, does at least prove its hip-hop pedigree through the genre’s most crucial element: unnecessary skits. I know you were hankering to listen to 90 seconds of rain noises and footsteps in the middle of your crossover blap-hop record, and Romantic knows it too. Listen and decide for yourself if this is a flop, failure, or abysmal failure of fusion. The choice is yours.

[h/t Metal Sucks]