DECAYCAST Reviews – Witches Of Malibu – “The Grand Crucifier” (Dead Media Recordings, 2018)

DECAYCAST Reviews – Witches Of Malibu – “The Grand Crucifier” (Dead Media Recordings, 2018)

Witches of Malibu is the project of underground  industrial / harsh noise / psychedelic master Skott Rusch also of Hunting Lodge fame.  For this  release Skott’s playing under the WOM moniker and this one is released by  Dead Media Recordings, out of Ontario, CA. “The Grand  Crucifier” opens up  with a distant noisy, slow,  industrial rhythmic thudding which slowly grows with frequency, intensity and  terror.  A violent, shuddering call and response pacing develops between cold, clanging metal blasts of  metal and high pitched, unrelentingly harsh, static-filled, spikes of noise and chaos, however it never morphs into anything that could be construed as carelessly random. One thing that sticks out of these tracks is the the  tension, intention, and focus remain focused on their own bleak starkness which only serves to make the sounds that much darker and menacing. These cuts are super intentioned, and never fade into the realm often visited in harsh noise of unconnected,  random and selfish sounds, each  section possesses its own structure and harsh intentionality,  and with each sonic shriek, stab, or inverted  explosion comes a heightened peak of anxiety and uneasiness,  again and again until that is the listener is meant with deafening silence upon the tracks completion. Not to fear though, as dark soup will be served at the table all night, and the bleak, misty, cavernous  alienating sounds of WOM aren’t going anywhere, at least for the duration of this cassette.

The second track, Strike Strikes (04:11) is perhaps the  album’s most static offering in terms of movement, but  still provides a grating, hellish, scraping soundtrack to the days  activities of  gently knifing out your eyeballs and rolling them down the hill as they collect dirt and eradicate the last bits of light folded into your brain. The track builds with volume, form and intensity and by the end, a dark psychedelic confusion sets in and you can neither see nor hear nor feel where you have ended up, the pulsing has eclipsed all of your senses and the deafening shrieking has taken over. 

The third and probably strongest and most dynamic track, “The Shine Cannon-Hectic Parasite”  starts with an almost inaudible hum for a  few seconds and then quickly turns into a buzz saw like cacophony of synth engine  destruction, slowly shifting and pulsing to bleed out the last bit of orientation one may have had at this point in the listening experience. The buzzing  goes from a constant square like jagged, aggressive, but relatively static,  sound to  morphed , twisted, swirling  sphere of sonic memory failure, blending into the next wave of  aural destruction. The cassette closes out with a slightly more minimalist, barren, percussion  forward track with some  subtly shifting whirling string like synths which sound more like a bowed saw than  synthesizer, blending perfectly with the choppy, blown out, mangled and twisted percussion. Rhythms pound and shake and eventually fade  away. The cochlear is now a dark, barren hole into the center of nothingness, and the  white noise blasts, high shrieking oscillators and garbled transmission ensure you won’t be making it back up the hill- you are forever  trapped in the  bottom of this pit and the sound  of  scraping, clawing, clamoring blasts of  sonic slag is the last sound that will  ever  pressurize your  ear  drum. Good bye. The end. Buy this TAPE HERE  or pretty much anything by this project.

 

– Michael Daddona

 

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DECAYCAST Reviews: UNSUSTAINABLE SOCIAL CONDITION “Pleasure Seeking Pacifists” (Phage Tapes, 2018)

DECAYCAST Reviews: UNSUSTAINABLE SOCIAL CONDITION “Pleasure Seeking Pacifists” (Phage Tapes, 2018)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oxen label  head-honcho Matt Purse is back at it again with another no holds  barred  harsh noise ripper,  released by another veteran in the harsh/death/industrial hellscape,  MN based imprint Phage Tapes.  

“Pleasure Seeking Pacifists” comes right out of the gate with alienating brutality,  not even wasting a  second on some unnecessary intro and belts right out of the speakers with crunchy, ear splitting harsh noise with very little variation.  To the  casual or unsuspecting listener, sections of this cassette could potentially even fall under HNW category, though i think not to the discerning listener as their is some pretty interesting variations happening if  you can make them out once the  blood crusts over dried crispy inside the listeners ear and an entire dead sea of chaotic violent manipulations of the sounds become more articulated and present .

Thick scraping nails pull against a dead  chalk board which shimmers into the  listeners ear with a whistle meaning its time to eat the static and then death is the  logical next step. This cassette is unrelenting, it;s the style of undulating static, mid-high frequency  harsh noise that I would blast on the subway to alienate the morning commute into isolation, Did I say relentless yet? Because it is. Brutal, pummeling and alienating . This is top notch psychedelic noise. Purse holds nothing back with this sonic assault and with each release, further solidifying himself as one of the masters of new North American Harsh noise.  Short  review for a short but HIGHLY IMPACTFUL release. Highly recommended.

ORDER THE TAPE HERE ,

DECAYCAST REVIEWS: Attilio Novellino & Collin McKelvey – “Metaphysiques Cannibales” LP/ Digital (Weird Ear, 2018)

DECAYCAST REVIEWS: Attilio Novellino & Collin McKelvey – “Metaphysiques Cannibales” LP/ Digital (Weird Ear, 2018)

 

by Diego Aguilar-Canabal

My first instrument was not a guitar, piano, or computer—it was a space heater. I crawled up to it on my feeble haunches (so my parents recall), eyeing with skepticism the plastic cage holding its inner circuitry, and scraped a toy truck against its indifferent grooves. It was music, but not art; in a word, it was sound, yet without form.

Humans entertain themselves by forming patterns out of meaningless garbage, and the venerable Weird Ear imprint is almost religiously devoted to stripping those patterns back down to the garbage whence they came. No less ambitious is their latest platter of sonic sacrilege, Colin McKelvey & Attilio Novellino’s Metaphysiques Cannibales.

The anti-conceptual hodgepodge of musique concrete motifs is named after and perhaps inspired by a book of the same name by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, a poststructural anthropologist who sought to reimagine the study as a revolutionary “decolonization of thought.” That’s a tall order, and no single record will get the job done, but McKelvey & Novellino’s mystical ballet of bleeps and bloops certainly gets the ball rolling.

As you may remember from your earliest toys—particularly from your realization that anything in your hands could be a toy—no melody is inherently happy or sad. No ritual carries inherent reward. It seems like only the Pavlovian training by authority figures can teach you, fragile caged pigeon that you are, can pair a major-key waltz with a sweet refreshing ice cream, or the somber diminished chord with a demonic possession. But is that really how it works?

Side A of this mindfuckery starts with the buzzing whiplash of factory-like rhythms, swirls into the void of a cosmic dentist’s drill, and fades into the spacious echoes of a zombie-ridden hospital morgue. Sources are obscured, and the arbitrary distinction between impact and intent implodes in a serene chaos.

Side B creeps into your consciousness with the whispers of a long-lost French interrogation recording, swallowed by the tinkering and thudding of a conch shell sceance. A molten fax machine emerges from the sludge of a forgotten video game organ dirge, and a scintillating synthesizer drone evokes Laurie Spiegel and Roedelius before sinking into a lonely abyss. The urgency of a broken dial-up connection is tempered by the ebb and flow of a chilling piano loop.

While the grating hiss of granular synthesis is typically the domain of futuristic computer music—you know, all those sweaty nerds coding in Max/MSP—here it gives the music a sense of being unimaginably ancient, like a mad scientist’s vision of the future whispered into a phonograph to pass the time while waiting for the brine to embalm a dead monarch.

“By always seeing the Same in the Other,” writes Castro, “by thinking that under the mask of the other it is always just ‘us’ contemplating ourselves, we end up complacently accepting a shortcut and an interest only in what is ‘of interest to us’—ourselves.”

Indeed, the image we see of ourselves in this record is a terrifying one, and not seeing yourself reflected is a “don’t think of an elephant”-esque impossibility. We’re tragically vain, capricious, greedy yet wasteful, hungry to build something meaningful out of heaps of trash we never wanted in the first place.

If you’re ready to sweat through your nightmares and wake up more confused than ever, this is a record worth adding to your trash-heap.

DECAYCAST Reviews: Reverent – “Live Exorcism 2017” (American Damage, 2017)

DECAYCAST Reviews: Reverent – “Live Exorcism 2017” (American Damage, 2017)

Reverent is the  Chicago based project of  Jordan Reyes and, for the  duration at  least of this release,  focuses on strictly voice- based industrial / loop based  rhythmic works.  The sound of Reverent oscillates between traditional primitively rhythmic based  industrial, drone, and ritual music / chanting and experimental noise. This specific release is titled “Live Exorcism 2017”, and functions both sonically and conceptually very much in that realm. In one section the listener is being led on a more pronounced almost spoken word / beat section of the performance and then things begin to shift to a slower, more abstracted version of a similar piece. Reverent never stays in one lane too often throughout the piece, always  keeping the  dynamics and composition shifting in an interesting and unique way. Technically speaking, a rather full vocal range gives the artist the ability to construct full sounding works from just the voice, I’ve heard other vocal based acts which can come off as gimmicky or contrived in a way but Reverent is absolutely not that at all. Every bar, ever loop, every breath seems intentional and  carefully places, there’s never really a slip  up, we as the listener are presented with a polished, dense, articulate set of vocal explorations, which are no short of  songs unto themselves, but also they exist a much more; an exorcism, a nervous, manic cleansing of the performer.

Reverent is truly a unique project, sound and concept wise, as I cannot really compare it to anything else. Stylistically, it could exist in similar realms of drone / percussion pioneer Z’EV, NURSE  WITH WOUND, COIL, but could also operate in a  more contemporary  undiscovered space/zone as well,  blending dense layers of  vocal processing to an almost fever-dream style of symphonic production. The sound of Reverent is nervous, trance-like and for  lack of a better tern, darkly triumphant. Reyes really does craft all of the parts of a traditional “song” with just the human voice, bass lines, poly-rhyhms, leads, and more  traditional vocal layers; an entire band is born from the esophagus;  come alive. Even if you are dead,  you will be reanimated by the  ritualistic chanting drones and  oscillations of Reverent.

 

Reverent is about to  embark on a short  tour and here is the information below. Make sure to catch one of these live rituals if possible; if so much  can be gained from just a live mic  recording of these works, imagine what they must present like in the flesh and in the ear; NOT TO BE MISSED.

 

 

 

DECAYCAST Reviews : Cadaver In Drag – “People Meant To Die” (HUSK, 2018)

DECAYCAST Reviews : Cadaver In Drag – “People Meant To Die” (HUSK, 2018)

 

“People Meant To Die”  by underground stalwarts Cadaver In Drag is  nothing short of a classic  reissue from Josh Lay’s longstanding Lexington, KY based imprint, HUSK RECORDS. Underground legendary grind/noise outfit C I D belt through  viscous, heart stopping grind core songs  which often sound more like machines shutting down than actual music.  Menacing, pummeling riffs bleed top spastic,  pummeling drums  and thick layers of homemade synths  and electronics.  The  vocals oscillate between early Black metal and  growling slabs of  guttural noise; the perfect  glue to seal your  ride all the way to hell. Cadaver In Drag belt forth classically atonal offerings  of  bleeding esoteric heaviness which  cannot really be  categorized as “grind” , “metal” or even “noise”. It does  contain all of these elements however it is a sonic beast all on it’s own and angrily and aggressively defies classification. FAST, ANGRY, CHOPPED, BLEEDING, PULSING, CHURNING, BREAKING, DYING, ACCELERATING. All these things seem to be happening at the same time; this record is the  acceleration of anger, chaos, and  heaviness into the ear.

Originally recorded in 2003 by Trevor Tremaine of  Hair Police fame ,re-released in 2018 yet is seems just as  fresh and relevant as ever. Additional electronic  slabs of  chaotic, sputtering noise are  laid  down by local KY maniac, and  psychedelic visual artist Robert Beatty, also of Hair Police fame, add to the  general chaos and uneasiness that this recording is  known for. Endless layers of  quick moving, buzzing, breaking, battling homemade synths  clash with pummeling, arrhythmic  walls of lightning speed percussion and flying, buzzing,  choking guitars assault the  listener  with a seemingly endless barrage of  thick dark, esoteric slabs of  heavy  grind and noise. All of the instruments blur together in the most desired, intentional way possible to  create a truly menacing, abrasive  style of heavy music/noise all of their own, which is often replicated but rarely done with this amount of precision, intention, and menace..

Big sounds, violent  outburst after  violent  outburst of bleeding, confusing negative vibes in the best way  bring the listener further and  further into a pit of chaos- a  sonic stew of your last chosen meal. The world needs more bands like Cadaver In Drag, an this reissue is an absolute must own for  any and all fans of heavy music.  Totally unique and essential listen. HIGHLY  RECOMMENDED you go order it HERE.  Paypal/E-Mail = huskrecords@yahoo.com.

DECAYCAST Reviews: THE FATHERS “Sound Advice” Cassette / Digital (T/ECA, 2018)

DECAYCAST Reviews: THE FATHERS “Sound Advice” Cassette / Digital (T/ECA, 2018)

The Fathers is Nathan Bowers of Tusco Embassy, Coagulator, Sun Poisoning, Sexorcyst and many  many others, and Derek Gedalecia of  Headboggle / Hillbogglle, Headlights et al taking a fresh and free sonic approach to  avant gardism through minimal, stringed  psychedelia. On “Sound Advice”, Bowers and  Gedalecia seamlessly concoct  a sonic stew of a tonal stringed rhythms through oceans of various tunings and strategies. Synthesizers, tapes, and guitars bend, flex, bow, and squeal through a distorted and plucked array of sonic excitement.  Big chords, dizzying chords , buzzing chords are  accented by splattering drum machines, long synthesized echoes, minimalist plucks, scrapes, taps, pings, rings, and reverberations  melt into distant walls of unknown feedback.  Eerily scraped axes, densely weighted keys, arpeggio stringed madness is the twisted spine of these dense  arrangements.

Click tape to order from T/ECA Store

The Fathers cover a wide  range of  sonic territory on “Sound Advice” effortlessly oscillating between musique concrete, new music,  avant grade classical  and  even some  straight up  noise  to boot. The Fathers  don’t stay in one place for  very long, but  long enough to give these  pieces life beyond  just improvisational experimentations, these are complex, complete  sonic works into themselves, but they also tell a longer, deeper story to the listener who is willing to make the connections or  break the connection.   The  A side offers one long twenty minute track which begins with subtle synth blips, churning and chirping morse code to a dead  radio who’s operator has long abandoned ship,  backed by low and slow droning pulses, fluttering distant ringing warning bells of a barge slowly approaching the shore. The A  side  builds on ominous waves of  tension,  sounds elasticizing into each other in a sort of  Rude Goldberg style of call and response, but  it never sounds contrived or  “jammy” all of the  sonic events seem intentional  and as if they have a place in the overall crescendo and decrescendo of a  complex and damp mix. The sound never drops off, it only drops into the smallest part of  the listeners  ear to create a micro symphony of contorting notes and densely weighted rhythms.  The blending of the  guitars, synthesizers,  tapes and other instrumentation gel into a warm, atonal stew of  deep, soupy events.  Texture and thickness of  sounds  expand and  contract as the push and pull stylings of The Fathers operates like an elastic band of  tension, composition, and  duality, springing into a new  space to once again fold  back on itself.  The Fathers  create new  guitar music  quite unlike anything else, this tape is a must and it’s  exciting to see the  possible  return of T/ECA, who offer some of the most  unique and honest hand  silk screened layouts to date, a must own.  Grip it now.

 

 

 

DECAYCAST Reviews: ZSA ZSA GABOR “Left Skull Bank” Cassette (Stay Strange, 2017)

DECAYCAST Reviews: ZSA ZSA GABOR “Left Skull Bank” Cassette (Stay Strange, 2017)

“ZSA ZSA GABOR is dead” but the  sounds, voice, and pulses in a ritual are anything and everything but that. ZSA ZSA GABOR is one of the artists and founders of the Stay Strange SD Crew who boast a new label imprint, show collective and all creative force led by San Diego stalwart Sam Lopez aided in sound and  words from Ariel Irbe, Esteban Flores and Micheal Zimmerman, allwith their  own projects to boot under the  collective umbrella. Irbe performs and records  under the  S O L V  moniker, while Flores work as  Monochromacy represents  powerful, thick, radicalized  guitar  forward drone/noise works.  

“Left Skull Bank I” opens up the cassette after a brief intro with a dark, smudged, thick drone which slowly encapsulates the listener and then drops them in a voice cell of terror, confusion, disorientation, The time to talk isn’t now or maybe again for an hour  or even a year. Seal your lips shut for it’s  time for the  hymn of ZSA ZSA GABOR. This release is relentlessly and refreshingly diverse in its sonic character and nuance of sound and style; oscillation between spoken texts , drone, ambient, field recordings, distant screams that  ring like a hammer  smashing an ancient bell,  and  string based  swells ZZG has something for everyone , but at the sane time NOTHING FOR YOU. They owe you nothing and owe  everything to the void. Full tilt  sonic mayhem engulfs your  last thought and hope as your skull is  cast aside like an extra, misshaped, unneeded brick into the  ever-growing pile of death.

“Left Skull Bank 2” picks up close to  where part 1 left off, with a thick, buzzing,  shaking vibrato of  stringed chaos while a monotone, anxious, realistic voice reads and  breathes upon every swelling  stringed drone of death, and after a “brief  demonic interlude” the listener is  cast once again into the  chaotic experiments of death with Part three, twisting and  tangling the  false hope that we once had  with harsh stabs, angry, dissonant, atonal swells through a purgatory nobody wants to  even pass by for a minute. This  cassette runs the  full scope of experimental sounds but in a a unique and refreshing way, no rehashing, no redux, this is simply top notch experimental music,  get about it, be about it. .ZSA ZSA  GABOR  is a thick, swollen, controlled  anger, which is more or less the  sound of  a  decaying  future; you’re dead long after you  found out when you’re  going  to die, and if you’re worthy this  might make an appearance at the funeral to help shovel your lifeless  corpse to  rest eternally and be consumed by the  wormed earth. Follow  ZSA ZSA GABOR HERE and HERE.