Review by JD on November 13, 2011.

I have heard my fair share of really strange music over the years but I gotta tell you that my latest submission is a bonafide psychopathic album from a equally idiosyncratic band. Greek metallers Transcending Bizarre? has delivered one of the most aberrant, yet compelling metal release in the last few years.

With Symphonic Black Metal coupled with heavy shading of Avant-Guarde drone and this small feel of the psychedelic added in Transcending Bizarre? is a weird but wonderful collection of satanic lyrics, grand orchestration and perhaps heavy acid use. It is like sort of Black Metal meets classic 70's rock’s strange man Frank Zappa.

The music is breakneck heavy with ever second that passed, but the whole softer parts of weirdness thing bleeds through with each and every time a note is cast out. Through it all the creepiness is made by psychotic whispered vocals planted between hellish Black Metal screeches and strange eerie spoken voxs that build and move the haunting music. It is weird - yet scary as fucking hell.

Gotta tell you, my mind hit on exactly what this album reminded of. It was as if the 14th Century poem Dante’s Inferno had gotten an soundtrack made just for it... clearly the unholy score was written by Transcending Bizarre?. People that are into the Avant-Guarde/Black Metal side of things will love this album for many reasons, the rest of the metallic world needs to give this a chance. It is not normal metal by any stretch of the imagination. I believe that this work of sonic brutal art ‘Transcends’ all of the stereotypes that you could throw at it.

Transcending Bizarre? is so amazing, and the way that the album it held me in a trance as if hypnotized for the entire length of the CD and then for long afterwards is more than a Metalheads dream. Musically breathtaking, this band is in a class all of its own and I hope that there is much more to come.

Categorical Rating Breakdown

Musicianship: 9.5
Atmosphere: 9.5
Production: 10
Originality: 10
Overall: 9.5

Rating: 9.7 out of 10