decayREVIEWS : EN NIHIL “The Approaching Dark” CD (Eibon Records, 2012)

On January 21, 2013February 8, 2013 By AdminIn ReviewsLeave a comment

EN NIHIL is one of those artists that remains back in the shadows , with much more of a modest output than many of todays noise/experimental artists who release literally everything they record. THE DARK PULSING SKULL that is En NIHIL has chosen his position- remaining a bit in the shadows, while crafting throbbing, articulate noise / drone / dark ambient / harsh from
An unassuming position in the dark mist. I have a few of his releases and they are all composed and compiled with care, craft, and attention to detail, with the latest release, “The Approaching Dark” being no exception.

This disk flows seemlessly through harsh noise, rhythmic dark industrial, ambient spaced out textures and swelling rhythmic intensity blend together to give breath to the harsh blasts that lay beneath a thick yet subtle fog. Each sound on the disc comes across as intentional and deliberate – again and again combed over – no happy accidents here – every sound is carefully and conceptually placed to create an interesting and ominous space- giving way to the next and last sound; texture tension rod of black smoke .

At times super harsh and blasted out, and at other times restrained , EN NIHIL Creates a delicate balancing act of harsh abrasive pulsing attacks, desolate and near classical like compositions fueled by pulled back ambient sections which make the louds louder and are a wonderfully paced black breath to the overall ebb and flow of the disk. Composition wise, the disk doesn’t let up – a perfect balance of dense, anxiety ridden movements and sparse textured based tracks make this disk a fluid and theatrical atmosphere- just abrasive enough- and the artwork fully supports the sound, very high quality all around. This is bleak, dissonant soundscapes for a future vision of the absence of a current polluted consciousness. Be on the lookout if you can ever catch him live, because performances are few and far between.

Mp3 Sample “The Hearts Relent

Get it from the label http://www.eibonrecords.com/

http://ennihil.blogspot.com/

written by : malo

decayREVIEWS: DEIGN “PECUNIARY HUCKSTER” C20 (OOBR)

On November 14, 2012December 22, 2012 By AdminIn ReviewsLeave a comment

Out Of Body Records is at it again, WE REALLY LIKE THIS IMPRINT!! And up next is a project from PTM Jim…
DEIGN cuts, chops, hisses, smashes and pisses their way through intense, dynamic cut up chopped sounds and emotions, at times screeching and at times rumbling, jarring, dark, the sound of entropy. High pitched washes of white noise, sucking out your last breaths The DEIGN soundsdrum up to menacing shaking pulses of doubt, alienation, nervousness, sound mixes with blood, pus, and disease plagued cochlear. Stainless steel easrplugs cant save you from this menacing sound clawing in your ear and carving it out from the inside. There is someone watching you, waiting, broken brain, ready to attack and throw your motionless corpse back into the cog of the machine where it was spawned from. THIS IS DARK DARK CUT UP SOUNDS.

Rumpling pules, chaotic feedback modulation, scratchy cut up (tape?) sounds, industrialized distant rhythms, blood hymns, and unknown objects pushed in the red seemlessly blend together different levels of the conspiracy of self doubt- This tape contains sounds to break down the psyche and start over. MEANINGS regurtitating themselves in the form of the sounds of a pack of rabid dogs being slayed in the distance, approaching, the blood smell is metallic, a grating, gnarley wind of death invades your ears and into the skull. Personal political monsters are no match for this alienating anomaly.

Look as the eye in the sky proves you are alone from your own perspective, while a nervous, scattering, broken machine subtly yet intrusively hovers above. DEIGN is top notch in the harsh/cut up/industrial, whatever the fuck game. Check this out, as it’s becoming a treat to hear a project in this aesthetic vein that works with such care and intent. Dark, cynical, jarring cut up industrial / noises played with purpose and a nod to the void at the same time. The art and overall production value of this release is no surprise as Denton, TX Out Of Body Records delivers top notch production value which elevates this tape to another level.

writted by malo

DEIGN

Out Of Body Records

DECAYreviews: GNAWED / RXAXPXE Split Cs (Industrial Culture Records)

On July 2, 2012July 8, 2012 By AdminIn ReviewsLeave a comment

DECAYreviews: GNAWED /RXAXPXE Split Cs (Industrial Culture Records)

This arrived in the mail a few weeks ago out of the blue, I rip open the package to make sure it’s not a bomb ( it has the weight of one, not that I’ve ever picked one up, but let’s just say the whole package seemed “bombey” . Anyways a cassette tape encased in two sheets of metal bolted together, holding the cassette tight in it’s grips. (Yes, you actually had to unscrew one or two of the bots to get the cassette out, pretty unreal) It almost seemed as if the piece were fabricated for the project, either way the sterile presentation of the metal case leads the imagination wild as to the sounds that could be contained inside.

The GNAWED side opens up with dark, growling LFO scraping manipulation madness, oscillating undulating thwrawts of ripping bass, almost instantly bringing the listener down into the perspective on all things unnerving. Muddled CB radio esque style vocals emerge from the modulating squelching feecback synthesizers and a more dynamic space emerges and then it clutters into chaos, vocals and synths building up into a maddening, nauseating eclipse of chaos. A vortex in the universe starts sucking in on itself, creating broken vacuum stuttering synthesizer and vocal swells which unveil a dark sloppy underbelly of your subconscious; the rattling machines which you are slowly turning into. This is really well paced harsh industrial, but the clarity and sounds never really suffer as a result. Individual sounds blend together to thicken the chaotic sound, yet are never pushed to a point of muddying the mix, donr very well IMO, A great glimpse into the dark, chaotic harsh sonic world that is GNAWED.

Flip the tape and RXAXPXPE HITS YOU right off the bat with a bleeding, oozing, clawing harsh noise wall, layers and layers of feedback occasionally give way to high pitched squeals of what sound like a baby bird caught in a high pitched machine that needs lubrication BAD. Cluttering and clanging dark undertones modulate the wall but it remains LOUD steady and pretty unchanging, then it DROPS; giving way to a second track which is just as errie, yet has a slower and more refined pacing to it, Scratchy in the beginning and then the feedback decays into a middle-low bass drone which slowly modulates- sub oscillators help dig out your grave. The title and sounds of this all point to the soundtrack to the burial of the listener, Slow moving, relentless, and maddening. High pitched blasted distortion waves come in and out over the bass drone, but it goes on for a few minutes, and then CUTS in and out and in and out, until your not sure where the entire thing started. Distant distorted vocals slowly creep in and become a more prominent part of the mix but actual words/lyrics are pretty indistinguishable, would be nice if the lyrics are available somewhere? Aside from “personal meaning” to the artist him/her/them selves, I have honestly become frustrated with listening to people sing, yell , scream with no access to the content, i would like to know, but ONLY if the artist wants me to know, kind of a side rant, but the music and project title, only lead me to assume the lyrical content is harsh/negative/etc. Maybe I’m wrong. About 10-12 minutes in really gets going in a distinct, yet concise direction on the XRXAXPXEX side, a sudden cut of a feedback wall brings in a new more dynamic feedback wall, which holds the most meat- sounding of simple mic and feedback scraping whilst possesing an internal tension which elevates the track to the peak of the RXAXPXE side. It’s a bit more raw in it’s fidelity, yet controlled and articulate, and the groaning vocals play a wonderful counterpart to the stop – start flutter of the feedback punches. A solid tape overall and worth checking out if your into the harsh/industrial still that borders on wall at times.

written by : malo

available still from http://industrial-culture.com/

decayREVIEWS: DEVELOPER “OOBR004” CS (2011)

On February 29, 2012February 29, 2012 By AdminIn ReviewsLeave a comment

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DEVELOPER “OOBR004” C20 (Out Of Body Records, 2011)

dEVELOPER blazes forth sharp, visceral, hills of harsh noise walls, pausing and chopping for various lengths only to punch back in at the oddest time where your ear-mind just begin to orientate itself to the sound, and then it slices-dissappears-kills back in again. Super high pitched feedback blasts knife their way through blown out bass hammerings, and then swell together to once again enduce a choppy form f nausea. The parts of this tape that work best for me, are where it gets really choppy, as opposed to the places where the walls build up to a point of density where things become blurred and sashed out, but this never happens for long, as DEVELOPER stays on the pace quite swiftly throughout the majority of the A side. Roaring, pummeling mechanized broken up loops sift through the blown out pillars of chaos and take brief rests, before jackhammering the cavity with thousands of white noise ghosts. The more the tape goes on the less and less breaks there are between the chaotic buzzing walls, yet it never totally looses it’s chopped aesthetic and frenetic pacing. Developer’s style, on this release at least, doesn’t come off as a bunch of tracks piled upon each other digitally, but rather a line-in style of recording where the cuts are being made live, I have no REAL evidence of this, but that’s the “organic” nuance that I pick up from the aesthetics of the pacing and editing, done quite well.

DecayREVIEWS “GNAWED- Patience is Waste” c40 (OOBR, 2011)

On February 29, 2012February 29, 2012 By AdminIn ReviewsLeave a comment

“GNAWED- Patience is Waste” c40 (OOBR, 2011)

Dont know much about this project (seemingly cause im
Out of the loop) but from the second the tape starts rolling, it caught my attention. It starts with a throbbing dissonant beat with druid?esque synth swells, slowly building up to a chaotic explosion of exploding throat vocals spliced with sharp blasts of dense white Noise. Grating throbbing pillers of STATIC trigger machine guns synth and drum blasts tear apart the cochlear as overdriven howls of repeated pain pulse the speakers. Distant drum patterns start to build
Up to a creshendo of chaos, but all while Keeping the overall tension between the instruments. While mny harshnoise/rock/industrial hybrid bands go for an all out sonic assault, obliterating all traces of “traditional” instrumentation, GNAWED rides the line very well. Dark pulsing low to
Midrange synth tones
Provide a balanced and textured backdrop for the drums and vocals to breathe as voices of their own , yet building up into a swelling breathing, bleeding storm of sonic chaos. DECAYED~ blasting stabs of ear pain keep building and building into your speakers and start to short circut your system then silence, ear ringing silence.

Side B picks up where side A left off but with a slightly quicker pacing. A crumbling church bell modulates in the distance as subtle machines begin scraping and shaking at the fabric of time. Slow Building tones create a chaotic space of confusion and disorientation. Before you know it your back in fhe whirlhind of self hate. Each miniture explosion of sound is another howl into the whistling winds that curl off of the slopes of gravestones. Slow churning peels of distorted spun around vocals swell into a. Unscalable wall of noise. The second track on the B side is the most developed spacial of the tape, dispaying a great call and response style of spacialized development between the oscillating vocals, and crawling syntn a d percussuin blasts. Most ofthe tracks have noticable intros ans outros which helps to demonstrate them as movements within themselves. The tape slows down a bit toward the end to a last breath type pacing, a creaking ship of dangerous winds. Are you the last one left on the boat before it sinks? Buzzes again build into a shaking chaotic nervousness that keeps the listener on a delayed edge of sanity, as black winds smother the percussive sounds of machines malfunctioning in the vacant hole of the afterlife. Good luck with that

This release isn’t terribly varied in the sonic spaces and or structures that it explores., yet GNAWED manages to create articulated chaos and TENSION with a fairly simple and stripped down sound palette, something many projects in this genre seem to have difficulty grasping, a very solid release overall. Top notch death/power electronics! Will be looking out for new stuff by GNAWED for sure. Pro dubbed chrome tapes with pro printed labels and color covers with black and white inserts, beautiful decaying artwork wraps around the black tapE.

OVERALL : 8.7 /13
Written by : Malo
2/29/12

GNAWED

OUT OF BODY RECORDS