Godflesh - Post Self

Wellity wellity wellity, this just fucking came out of nowhere didn't it? There is always room in the world for more Godflesh so thank the heavens that Justin & Mr. Green have decided to bleed more of that sweet, sweet crushing goodness out into the world. Post Self might be one of the best Godflesh records ever. That is a sweepingly bold statement I know, but the band have expanded on their previous release with all of the experimental freakery that made them so brilliant in the first place. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the brutal simplicity of A World Lit Only By Fire, but what Post Self lacks in hammering riffs it makes up for tenfold in crushing atmosphere. Plus, the fucking hip hop beats are back, fam - 10/10! This type of thing was hinted at with "Dogbite", but then scaled back for the previous album itself. 

"Post Self", "Parasite", and "Mortality Sorrow" are three examples of how fucking stunning hip hop and break-style beats can sound in Godflesh's music, whilst songs like "Be God" and even more so "Pre Self" are something altogether more 80s Swans than Godflesh has ever attained to, even in their primitive beginnings. 

All in all, Post Self sounds everything like Godflesh but also sounds nothing like anything Godflesh have done before. A phenomenal progression, and a glistening, holy yet unholy, head-noddingly good step in the right direction. Knocked it out of the fucking park! A contender for one of my favourite releases this year, without a doubt. 

Head Noise - Special Effects Improves The Defects

(Words by Gareth Burra)

Head Noise are a 3 piece Electro Art-Punk band from South Wales, often using a keytar as a primary instrument as well as an array of nontraditional instruments. With no live drums or an actual drummer they are certainly a different act and stand out from the crowd with their less conventional, more experimental approach.

So here we have the bands new 6 track mini-album "Special Effects Improves The Defects", a very fun sounding release here; upbeat, with some wicked little electronic jingles and beats throughout, which wouldn't sound out of place in an 80s disco or a soundtrack to a film set in such era, truth be told.

Some highlights of the EP, for myself, are "Finally Snapped", which may be my favourite of the bunch, with its dark and ambient sound - I'm getting some major A Flock Of Seagulls-esque vibes from this one - as well as "Diamond Planet", with its perfect groove and a more alternative 80's sound.

Overall a nice little release her; its fun, its fresh, its different, and stands out. Nicely done.

Sehnsucht - Wuste

Well, now I know what Grand Declaration of War would have sounded like if Maniac was given full creative control! I'm kidding of course; the Richter-like artistic meandering here would be far too much to take for an intolerant little man like Hellhammer. But, as per always, I digress. Sehnsucht is the experimental / power electronics project between Maniac and his wife Vivian Slaughter, who also plays in Gallhammer. There are a few other musicians also involved in this project, but aurally it seems to center around Maniac and his disturbing prose.

Imagine feral electronics meets beret-tipping poetry and dark, dense atmospherics, backed with cutting electronic riffage and doused in stale rose water, or something. "Cunt Queen" makes for some interesting listening, but the best track, hands down, is the epic "Hanging In English Garden"; a ten minute romp through all of the shit listed above. Drastic!

CxBxFxIxHxFxLxFxRxE / Tetrahydrocannibal - Split CDr

This CDr is a split between prolific gorenoise lads Catastrophic Blunt Force Intercranial Haemhorrhage Fluid Leaking From Ruptured Eardrums and my gorenoise (read: "weednoise") project, Tetrahydrocannibal. It's the first time I have released something under this name in quite some time, so it was fun to get back to and work on some ridiculous song titles. I swore I wouldn't do another record until I'd shifted all the copies of the first, but this is a split, so that doesn't count, right? :P

Anyway, the CxBxFxIxHxFxLxFxRxEx side is fuckin' savage; I guess which is due in part to the usual cacophonous bludgeoning being broken up into smaller chunks. The studio production work (from George of Dead Woman's Ditch) also goes a long way in making sure CxBxFxIxHxFxLxFxRxEx's gore explosion comes with the necessary clout, as does the creepy as shit sampling work, which will literally make your year/decade if you love Ren & Stimpy quotes as much as you do gorenoise.

Sects - In The Sky

This is an absolutely mental little EP featuring members of Water Torture and Thedowngoing (who I am currently not too familiar with, I'll be honest). It only clocks in at around 5 minutes, but with this kinda hyper-intense level of energy I'll forgive the tiny run time. Bordering somewhere between a rehearsal room recording and a decent recording sesh for like, a split 7" or something, Sects meld different corners of the grind world together in frenetic, chaotic harmony. Imagine Benumb meets The Locust.

Pharmakon - Bestial Burden

I feel like I have an overwhelming urge to trepan my skull in order to fully envelope my conscious with the buzzing, numbing industrial stomp of Pharmakon's "music". I'm joking of course, but it kinda feels like the human brain alone isn't powerful enough to digest this disgustingly intense mix of industrial, power electronics and ambience. Pharmakon is not afraid to balance the serene and low-key alongside the bashing, crashing havoc of sheer noise, and that pays off in spades on Bestial Burden.

The artwork just plain creeps me out, too. Is it an autopsy? Is it a strange mediterranean salad? Is it both? Why am I hungry all of a sudden? Why are we even alive? ...Anyway, I digress. Harsh noise enthusiasts are no doubt already familiar with Pharmakon's offerings, however I would also recommend this to fans of horror movie scores, or ominous soundtracking in general. This shit is plain creepy, but it isn't afraid to get loud either.

Sissy Spacek - Gate

Excellent noisecore-meets-harsh noise project (I'm sorry if you are unaware of these subgenres, that sentence must look ridiculous) from the USA. Definitely something that will push the boundaries of my listening patience if all mushed together into one big cube, simply due to the frequency of the distortions used, however once broken up into grinding chunks of noisecore I find it much more humanly consumable, which is just great, folks.

This is one of those things that makes 7 minutes feel almost like an hour. If you like the noise-equivalent of someone scratching their nails on a blackboard to a bunch of blastbeats, then I wholeheartedly recommend this 7" record. Imagine early Anal Cunt overlapped with cripplingly-loud layers of 90s-era Merzbow or Masonna. Your gran would love it, fam.

Fire Walk With Me - Flesh World

Every year or so I come back to this project and record something new. I'm currently working on the 4th release for this project, and that got me thinking - I need to do another post about this shit. I can't review it, as it's mine, but I can tell you a bit about it. Flesh World is the second Fire Walk With Me record, and is by far my favourite; even out of the new one that's almost finished. How's that for a bleak noise outlook; I already think the best stuff is in the past, why are we even alive? Haha

This whole thing started in Cornwall when I had some time on my hands. Copious amounts of Stella Artois, weirdos on Plenty Of Fish and a binge watch of two seasons of Twin Peaks brought me to the usual frustration of wanting to record something noisy. Only, when I came to put it down, it just wouldn't come. I guess maybe it was the sleepy, laid back nature of my southern surroundings at the time. Instead I took a gentler route (there's still some noise), playing the longer, more ambient game. I did a lot of research on unsettling noises, and actually ended up sampling a lot of stuff from devices that had converted space probe signals into actual sounds. 

I keep meaning to put a few of these on CDr so I can shift 'em at Judas Cradle shows, but I'm just a lazy fuck. As always though, it's completely free to stream and download, so if this concoction sounds like your thing, do me a favour and try it out. Nice one!

Black Sun - Twilight Of The Gods

Black Sun are (or possibly were) a three piece from Scotland. I think (from lending CDs off the Doomfinder General) that they pretty much started out as a one man industrial/noise project before evolving into a full band. They self-released a bunch of stuff before this final full length dropped on Future Noise and Head Of Crom. Twilight Of The Gods is a solid album through and through. The best way I can quickly describe it off the top of my head is to imagine Swans and Iron Monkey having a fight in a methadone clinic. Oh, and Oxbow is there as well, just because.

The record bursts into life with "Code Black", re-recorded from the 7" split with They Are Cowards, quickly followed by the excellent "Terminal Velocity". "Gethsemane" is a perfect example of one of the album's gut-wrenching crawlers. "Black Angel" (possibly a nod towards Death In June with that title?) and "Warhead" remain two of my favourite songs ever. 

I'm not entirely sure what became of Black Sun, but leaving us with this record seems like a pretty good way to go out. 

Masonna - Spectrum Ripper

Masonna (not to be confused of course, with Madonna) is a staple and legend in the noise world. He is "famed" for his intense live performances, where his body is seemingly nothing more than a channel for pure chaos; as if some invisible higher power is playing the poor guy like a marionette and pouring the result out as harsh noise. These performances can be seen on YouTube, thanks to the wonders of modern technology. Spectrum Ripper, is the perfect audio-only representation of the Masonna chaos, split into 25 parts of various lengths, but flowing as one misanthropic ear exploding performance.

It's incredibly impressive when someone can carve their own sound out of of the harsh noise world; the scatty, super-distorted, vocal-led "pieces" are instantly recognisable despite being often imitated. It sounds like a cut and paste soundtrack to a descent into a mechanical hell, with delay pedals emphasising the machine-like repetition through the walls of sheer noise. Maybe it is hard to coin this a classic of the noise music / non-music genre, but this would do no wrong as a fantastic starting place for those curious to what noise is, or what it has to offer. 

Abruptum - Casus Luciferi

A while ago I was on some mad quest for black metal mixed with harsh noise. I was given a whole bunch of recommendations, one of which included Abruptum, who are apparently the most evil band in the world ever. Like, ever ever. I'm serious (well, they are, or were, at least). They even had a member called Evil, and if that doesn't prove anything then I don't know what will. Earlier material was even released by Deathlike Silence before Euronymous got carved to bits by Varg Vikernes. Those records sounded like Anal Cunt or 7MON having a stab at black metal, and to me seem to lay some sort of blueprint for projects such as Stalaggh to follow on with.

This however is a much more ambient affair. The first track is an irritatingly-lengthy piece of martial drums repeating over and over. The rest of the record is thankfully much better. I guess there is a black metal vibe, but for the most part the whole thing is just lo-fi soundscapes of sinister noise, which is absolutely perfect for 4am RPG sessions, I'll say that much. I ended up chaining the Abruptum discography after hearing this, and I much prefer their ambient "noise" stuff to the earlier "noisecore" style to black metal, which even for someone who absolutely loves noisecore, just sounds a bit crap, if I'm honest.

I promise you after 15 minutes you'll be hearing these drums in your sleep.

Swans - The Glowing Man

The Glowing Man is the final Swans studio album in the current reformed incarnation of the band. At first it seems extremely reminiscent of it's predecessor, To Be Kind, due to the package setup (another triple LP on card with minimal art) and the length of the record (although despite it's enormous run time, The Glowing Man is the shortest record the band have released in five years). As with 80s Swans, I've noticed an overall thawing in the menacing, noisy edge of Swans as the records have progressed, but this time, the delivery simply becomes more ethereal and almost peaceful, rather than deliberately less abrasive. Just compare the title track of The Seer to any of the 20+ minuters here, and hopefully you will see what I mean.

I mean, this is Swans, so it's hardly easy listening, but it's like your now being lifted to a higher plane, rather than being dragged there kicking and screaming. "Frankie M" is a stand-out track for me personally, especially the latter half with it's twisting lyrical repetition (I remember it from recent live shows), as is the rather harrowing piece by Gira's wife, "When Will I Return?". The title track, at a fucking glorious 28 minutes, reprises To Be Kind's "Bring The Sun" before culminating in, dare I say it, some sort of almost Kraut rock-style march. These 28 minutes seem to recap to me this entire recent reincarnation of Swans, pulling from all corners of the chaos in one final piece. The closing track that comes after it merely seems to exist as a cool-down period for the listener, and is aptly titled - "Finally, Peace".

Whilst I am extremely sad to see this era of Swans come to an end (I will miss mainly the death stares and gurns of Christoph Hahn) I am very excited to see where Michael Gira will take the project next, and if nothing comes of it, then The Glowing Man serves perfectly as an ending chapter to a long and extremely challenging musical career. 

If you have Spotify, you can stream the whole thing below. 

Consumer Electronics - Estuary English

I love power electronics and noise but when this came out I completely lost it....what the fuck is actually going on? Estuary English is one of those rare records that I completely fail to understand, so I wrote it off for a while, completely unable to comprehend what I was listening to. It just sounded like Vyvyan from the Young Ones screaming over sub par bits and blips of electronic mush. If that's what you want from your music then by all means Consumer Electronics are the band for you, but I had to duck out and then back into with an extremely open mind.

On the second run through I kinda started to get it; it almost sounds like Ramleh if you replace the walls of analogue noise with blippy digital crap (edit: the vocalist here, Philip Best, did have a stint in Ramleh). But y'know, it still kinda sounds like somebody just shouting over crap digital noise rather than anything that offers some kind of substance. I hate giving bad reviews, but this just isn't for me.

Glowering - Demo 2012

Glowering is a side project ov the tr00 and totes brutes invokator of gore noise havoc, Bobby Maggard. This time however, Bobby puts aside his hacksaw and bloodstained apron in favour of a pentagram-topped staff and a severed goat's head hollowed out to make a snug little mask, as black metal is the theme of the day. But this ain't no ordinary romp through black metal, no sir. It's quite annoying actually, because a few months ago I was looking for something just like this, and turns out it had been sitting on my CD shelf all along.

Glowering's 2012 demo mixes the dissonance of harsh noise (in a gorenoise style, if I can be so rediculous to try and point that out) with the ambience and imagery of black metal, creating a truly hellish listening experience that is sonically abrasive, but rather unfortunately, quite irritating by duration's end. Black metal often sounds like it was recorded in a wind tunnel. This is the wind tunnel.

Merzbow - Cycle

Look at all that lovely sand! Well, one assumes it's sand - like the coloured sand you hammer into crappy glass bottles on family holidays to the beach. No? Well fuck you.

Cycle is a pulsing, circular throb of a noise session, that loops and dives into waves of repetition and (yes) cycles; the palpable worm Ouroboros in wave format, writhing itself in undulations of sonic ecstasy. Yeah. At least, that is what part one sounds like. I expected more of the same from part two (because Merzbow really loves more of the same) but alas I was mistaken - part two starts with a building ambiance of muted synth noise before casually falling apart into a cacophony of what at first appears to be a succession of random sounds.

What's fascinating is, is that as the final stages of the record progress, the blips and hisses firing from all corners of the aural spectrum begin to sound like wildlife (edit: this record is rumored to include recordings of Merzbow's personal pet chickens). It is as if you are listening to a machine simulation of the Mekong Delta at sunset, rather than a harsh noise record.

Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante

Caustic layer upon layer. Saxaphone meets blastbeat. Noisecore meets lounge. Rumba, oompah, slide, shake, swing, mosh, grind, kill. Disco Volante; secret songs, leftfield, experimental, techno, disco, rock, electronica. Sophomore, confusion, exclamation, subtlety, song within a song within a groove within a phrase within a suite. 

Mr. Bungle's second record is by far their most difficult to get into. It offers a level of inaccessibility that is surprising even for a band whose sole purpose seemed to be to experiment and push boundaries. The tracklist reveals that there are somewhere in the region of eleven or twelve songs on this record, but to me the entire thing just sounds like one trip, where, for the most part, "songs" are indistinguishable from each other as they either blur into one or are broken down into so many parts it's hard to keep track of what is what. A perfect example would be "Carry Stress In The Jaw", a loungy jazz number that collapses head-on into speeding thrash and irritating noise rock, before closing out completely for the geriatric-sounding waltzing of the innate "Secret Song" (which is also part of the same song). Yeah.

"Desert Search For Techno Allah" and "Violenza Domestica" seem to be a ten minute suite of weird noises rather than coherent songs. In the latter, Patton yells random Italian phrases over a classico Italiano composizione (and I just racially stereotyped far worse than this track itself) before the rest of the record blurs together into a mush of spazzy outbursts and meandering background noise. Just as any hope of getting into a particular groove or nuance arises, the entire thing uproots and shakes off the previous approach, delving into something new before your tiny mind can comprehend it. 

Endless, morose, insane, distant. Close. In your face. Loud, quiet, fast, slow. Intense, soft, lush, abrasive. It's like bugs crawling around inside your head it's like bugs crawling around inside your head it's like bugs crawling around inside your head it's like bugs craw}}..'[[=]////////////___

Torturing Nurse - Nonentity

Nonentity is a grating, deafening displaying of analogue harsh noise broken down in to three consumable parts. The first part hisses and belches the way good noise should, before the second track “Abuse” provides us with a break that, in all honesty, seems to come a little bit too soon. The third part kicks back in for a final 15 minute push through a seascape of bubbling static bliss. I find myself trying to loop it over in my head, searching for patterns and meaning. But, like most harsh noise, there isn’t one. Just total sonic annihilation. And then it’s over.

Nonentity comes in a really fancy DVD-sized case with full artwork and even includes a little booklet choc-full of further xeroxed imagery; a disturbing tangible accompaniment to the aural freakshow that is Torturing Nurse. There’s a ton of harsh noise out there these days, but Torturing Nurse is some of the best. Check out Palinopsia Recordings who put this release together. 

Hecker - Recordings For Rephlex

(words by Kristian Cole, Merthyr Tydfil's very own laureate of the digital noise revolution)

As we are inclined to wash the feet of the beggars John Cage (American Tramp) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (German Weirdo) I cannot help but think what shit they pulped out over their years of sound production. Cage and Stockhausen, both from academic musical backgrounds, may have seemed ground breaking to the other chin rubbing fucksnouts who pretended to understand their take on 'music' and assembled themselves in Europe's café's to discuss the preceding minimalism which was rolled across their cochleas in null tones. "Fuck mainstream, I'm academic!" Of course you are. I pat you on the head as you use musical instruments in non musical ways. 

The avant-garde was born and rolled on into the underground when the first noisefag chained a few distortion pedals together and amped that fucker to the three gig attendees, who in turn rubbed their chins in faux-understanding. Hooray, academic experimentation had been assimilated and reborn in the underground! Ok, I jest...there is certainly a connection with Throbbing Gristle's first punk gigs, the art world, right time, right place, London, yadda, yadda, yadda, industrial, noise, power electronics, yadda, yadda, yadda. I can only assume by the time Florian Hecker had arrived in the academic arena (studying Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics at Ludwig Maximilian Universität, Munich, and Fine Arts at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna) the use of the Supercollider app was a free download with his course and although he may have been too pissed to use it around freshers week, he certainly used it mid term of the first year. Supercollider enables digital noise to take place using code and the copy and paste method of code to file, save as, etc.

Of course I am jealous, Florian sits within the art world as well as the underground, and fuck that is something I yearn for. His dealings with Rephlex Records and Aphex Twin certainly garnered enough street cred to take this Germanic genius and place him, anorak and all, into a realm of exposure that highlights how electronic music can be deciphered and displayed to us Luddite's with charm. Noisefags may chain a thousand pedals together and stand back in awe of their own pomposity but Hecker explains it with an actual interest in the subject (see Liner Notes). Hecker's main instrumentation on this very album is produced by laptop and supercollider application. Not a pedal in sight and good fucking riddance to analog purists. Long live digital noise and its programmatic constructs. We are all a copy and paste away from white noise screaming through the backbone of a PA. 

The scope of digital noise is unfathomable as its multiple range of frequency ranges can be mined indefinitely, looped, arpeggiated and aligned with the time of day as a global variable. Yet we still have noisefags jamming a soldering iron up a Teddy Ruxpin doll's arsehole for self satisfaction; boring childish cunts, come dream digital noise with me tonight.

The liner notes certainly divulge the albums processes, lets take a look:

1. Hénon Map & Gingerbread Man (Linear Edit) 

Gingerbread man

Henon map

Starting from my previous works using dynamic synthesis for sound generation, I was intrigued to use nonlinear differential equations to generate chaotic signals. Although complex equations are frequently used in algorithmic composition to define pitch or note selection criteria, their use as a source for direct sound synthesis is rather unpopular. This recording is based on the Hénon map and gingerbreadman functions. The sonification of these equations offers a wide spectrum of sounds ranging from simple sine waves to coloured chaotic noises. These are different from 'classic' noises such as white, brown or pink noise due to their features of nonlinearity and feedback. 

06:26 

Kristian says "Hecker used noise objects to produce noise. Code was written...or copied and pasted. Noise music placed in the context of actual beats, not club worthy but still a piercing slab of digital noise, an ear bleeder at the right volume. In your car you may be able to get the same effect whilst searching for radio stations."

2. Pulsar Wg'lett 

This short track was produced for the second Götoborg Biennial 2002. It was generated entirely with the 'PulsarGenerator' software, a framework for a speciality particle synthesis developed by Curtis Roads and Alberto de Campo. Subsequently it was edited in a two channel audio editing software. 

03:46 

 

Curtis Roads and Alberto de Campo ^ ^ ^, they are actually two different people just same specs.

Kristian says "Both left and right stereo spectrums have been used to place noise music in. Imagine the initial stereo recordings of the 60's, replace the bowl hair cut mummy Beatle boy cunts with aimless scraping blips and beeps, Uncle bob is your Uncle."

3. Precedence
For his 2004 Solo exhibition in Marseilles, Carsten Höller asked me to contribute a sound piece. Shortly before this invitation I started researching on psychoacoustic effects using time delay, and therefor came across the precedence effect. I produced a series of seven percussive, rhythmical tracks, eventually named Höller Tracks, all of them based on short sequences of pulsars, synthesized with 'PulsarGenerator'. The one featured on this album is the edit which was also used in the exhibition. Additionally to the constantly alternating shift between a lagging click in one channel and a leading click in the other channel, each channel was phase inverted every few seconds to add higher spatiality and increase spatiotemporal confusion. 
04:17 

Kristian says "Hecker used delays over left and right stereo fields. more info on the Precedence Effect here. You can download PulseGenerator from the network."

4. Acid 245; Ph.Inv 9T2 

She will not like this

Produced for the 3rd Berlin Biennial 2003. 

05:38 

Kristian says "Accccciiiiiiiiiiiiiidddddd.......if you were on a fucking downer."

5. C 04 05 I_μdd 

05:02 

Kristian says "Aphex Twin style track naming process. Harsh."

6. 4G5EQ 94825492426.7531 

00:55 

Kristian says "Aphex Twin style track naming process. Shrieking."

7. In Actu (Create 7.1 Edit) 

Here's how you fuck shit up.

This piece is centered around an edit of a live performance at the Bartos Theatre, MIT Media Lab in May 2004. This recording features extensively all the processes and techniques I've been using, namely pulsar synthesis, waveset processing, dynamic stochastic synthesis and chaotic synthesis. The editing strategy I applied was made in close memory of Bruce Gilbert's albums Ab Ovo (Mute, CD STUMM 117, 1996) and In Esse (Mute, CD STUMM 171, 1997). 

12:21 

Kristian says "Fucking shit up."

8. Wippi 

02:53 

Kristian says "Piercing. Future power electronics...now!"

Conclusion:

Mentioning the word 'meaning' in the same sentence as the word 'Noise' blows the brains out of noisefags who take every word in the dictionary as gospel. "Noise is non data! meaningless!" What it should be is "Noise is academic! I only learned how to chain pedals two days ago!" Hecker may have never heard of power electronics but this surely crosses that boundary. All he needs is a few reference sto serial killers and an image of a stabbed prostitute or two and you would have a sheer classic.

Beyond all the brain pulsating literature here is a Rephlex fan's comment (got this off the internet):

"I have collected "electronic music" since early 1991 and now have over 4000 records and cds, just in this category. From Xenakis to Autechre - I listen to everything electronic that I can get my hands on. I also own nearly every release that Rephlex has produced thus far. I felt the need to preface this comment with that information because I believe this to be the single most pointless "thing" that Rephlex has yet released (topping Lektrogirl with EASE!). It's not music, by any means. You could call it "experimentation", if you like to experiment with ramming sewing needles in your ears while machines bleep and blare aimlessly around you at deafening levels. I honestly did not find ONE second of this release to be enjoyable. Ya know those "noise" tracks on the AFX Men releases? Extend that silliness over 35 minutes or so and you'll be getting close. There's a bit more variety to these tracks, but they're still ear splitting nonsensical noise. Now, if this is your thing, great! You should pick this up with a quickness. But if you're looking for some good old-fashioned Braindance, this ain't it."

Urine Festival - Of A Hermaphroditic Enema & Urophilic Pissparty Pleasure

Urine Festival is one of those things that exist to challenge you on how you feel about a particular genre, sound, theme or subject. A ridiculous form of music at the best of times, goregrind (or porngrind) is known for it's reams of dodgy content and greasy subject matter. Often, it takes somebody or something pushing the elements making up your favourite genre to the absolute maximum extreme before you can begin to reflect and question yourself and your interest in such circles. When one immerses oneself in extreme music one can lose perspective on the extremity of it all ("For if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you").

Obviously there are sounds more abrasive than this. Harsh noise exists. But for me, the absolute extremity of goregrind laid with Last Days Of Humanity's Putrefaction In Progress record for a very long time. And then I heard Urine Festival (ironically the brainchild of a LDOH member Marc Palmen). Goregrind has meshed rather successfully with noise music these days (gorenoise anyone?) but this album is the first true instance of such an extreme sound. One could argue that the Meat Shits have a lot of credit due in the creation of "music" such as this but I strongly feel that a lot of gorenoise and modern goregrind imitate the puzzling gurgle of Urine Festival.

It's during listening to records such as this I realize just how far I have fallen down the rabbit hole on my quest to discover the musical extremes. This is, quite evidently, not for everyone, but I couldn't recommend it more. 

This full album vid is incorrectly listed as 66 untitled tracks.

Swans - Filth

LINES IN WAX 500th POST EXTRAVAGANZA!

Who in their right mind would have thought I could write 500 album reviews? Actually who in their right mind would write 500 album reviews? Well the answer is little old me. As Lines In Wax passes it's 4th birthday, we also reach this milestone in posting. As with the 100th and 250th post, I would like to quickly thank everyone for their continued support and readership. Without your disapproving eyes, I'd be writing for myself and a few Google bots, which is an even sadder existence than the one I'm leading now. In celebration of the 500 milestone, I have decided to "review" one of my absolute all time favourite records. Here's to another 500 posts!

Swans are my favourite band in the entire universe (outside of grindcore). They have a long and meandering career spanning 4 decades, numerous genres, 13 studio albums and an obscene amount of other releases. The most savage of the bunch has to be Filth, the band's debut album from 1983; a clanking, grinding beast dominated by the unusual presence of not only two bassists but two drummers. The guitar is an afterthought. Some people argue that the Cop album is heavier, and whilst that is true in the fact that Cop is more akin to 'metal' than anything that appears on Filth, I firmly believe that the scraping, mechanical abortion of Filth far surpasses any form of heaviness that any metal music could possibly hope to convey. Being 32 years old this year, Filth was incredibly ahead of its time, and far more influential than we could possibly ever hope to measure.

Opening with the lurching "Stay Here", what Filth is all about becomes apparent very quickly. It is like some horrible machine has come to life. "Power For Power" is one of my favourite songs in the entire universe; the drums are absolutely devastating. This song says a lot to me, not only on an inter-personal level with the games people play with each other, but about Western culture and capitalist/consumerist culture in general. "Thank You" is almost danceable, before "Weakling" laid the template for every Godflesh song recorded before 1990. It sounds like the world slowly dying....

I own an original pressing of this record, although it has just been lovingly remastered (I'd love to hear the mule kick on that fucker). I could fanboy about this shit for hours so don't take my word for it, just listen. If you've heard it before there's no reason not to do it again. Crank it ALL the way up for this one.