True misanthropic nationalists

Akitsa - Nationalisme misanthropique (mp3)
Akitsa - Prophetie heretique (mp3)
Akitsa on MySpace

Akitsa comes from Quebec. There are two members and they both play guitars and drums alternately. I'm aware of how false this may sound, considering that all the bands in BM scene are trying to be true and genuine (it has a lot in similar with rap music actually), but Akitsa has UNDERGROUND written all over it. It's uncompromisingly raw and primitive, but experimental at the same time.

With song structures Akitsa keeps things as simple as possible. Usually there aren't more than four or five riffs, sometimes only two. The drum beats are repetitive and don't change during the whole song. But those riffs and beats are well chosen and there are a lot of interesting combinations. I'm getting a bit too excited now, but it's like Steve Reich playing garage punk. And even if there is a solo it's just repeating one pattern. It's a matter of taste, a lot of listeners probably find it too simple. But I like it how they are avoiding all those typical rhythm fills and chord changes. It's obviously intentional, Akitsa's views are much wider than anybody would expect from a garage band. They have done marchial sound collages that remind me NON from the period of "In the shadow of the sword" (Hymne a la guerre on "Soleil Noir"). They have also done some acoustic stuff, this could be called dark-folk, but that style usually never gets so dirty. Akitsa doesn't care if some clumsy mistakes happen during the playing. And the sound is a true earcandy for the fans of lo-fi recordings. It's extremely raw and loud, fueled with adrenaline. All the instruments are overamplified and there's a lot of feedback noise. They have a lot of punk-rock attitude and the music is very punkish too. With bands like Akitsa it's really hard to describe that blackmetal essence in them. I mean there's much more in it, than just those inhuman vocals and grim frosty landscapes on record sleeves. This music is NECRO. There are punk and psychobilly bands singing about graveyard parties - The Misfits and The Meteors for example, but their music is full of life energy and excitement - this is not necro. But the overwhelming nihilism, despair and straight panic in Akitsa's music - it just spits on everything you ever wanted to live for. I haven't listened much of punk, but I don't think that there are any bands so insanely angry as Akitsa. They sound like skinheads full of hatred and with a PLAN! I can never take seriously that anger against christianity, but here we've got whole different thing. It's that patriotic or proletarian anger, that you can witness on protest meetings. I can't understand it fully, because I have always avoided hard work and I don't care about politics, but I sure don't want to argue with those maniacs. When the vocalist screams in high pitch I don't even want to know what he must feel during that, but it must be at least as painful as drinking acid. Then again some songs are with clean vocals. When BM bands use clean vocals, they usually try to sound pagan and medieval or something. When Akitsa does it, the case is probably the same, but there isn't much romanticism in it, this sounds so self-confident like they haven't got anything to loose. It's like beating somebody up using just voice. Then again, it might sound a bit romantic - when you think of it as some bums trying to sing old military marching tunes, out of key of course. And after a while it just turns into wordless howling.
Besides the common themes of winter landscapes and misanthropy an important lyrical issue here is radical nationalism. They want Quebec to be separated from the rest of Canada. The lyrics are in french of course.