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FECALOVE Deadweight 7 INCH VINYL (Bloodlust!)
A vicious new slab of power electronics from Italy's Fecalove, aka Nicola Vinciguerra. My first exposure to Fecalove's murderous power electronics was through the super limited releases fromm the band that Vinciguerra has issued on his Italian division of Turgid Animal which he operates; everything that I've heard so far from this project has been supremely savage, purely visceral PE that's at the evil end of the spectrum, influenced by the likes of Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jugend, but with nasty black metal style vocals that give these electro-terror shock attacks a real demonic vibe.
The a-side track "Deadweight" is exactly this sort of devilish power electronics. An omnipresent harsh electrical buzz runs through it, a thick static drone that underscores the ugly nihilistic lyrics and fucking evil vocals that start in almost immediately; where a lot of PE can be static and lacking in dynamics, this is not...it's a number of different parts arranged into something resembling an actual song, moving between a couple of different sections and making for a dramatic, terrifying dose of heavy electronic hate. On the flipside, "When" appears as a stirring call to a return to total bestial savagery, a seething power electronic dirge of flesh-tearing high-end feedback, massive low-end synth throb and those evil distorted vokills, blasting your skull with electronic violence until it ends in a violent salvo of crashing scrap metal.
Comes on pink vinyl in a hand-numbered limited edition of 200 copies, and packaged in a full-color sleeve.
GUILT OF, THE self-titled CD-R (Bloodlust!)
The debut full length from The Guilt Of..., the new industrial duo of Mike Williams (Eyehategod/Outlaw Order/Arson Anthem) and Ryan McKern (Wolvhammer). If you've followed Eyehategod for a while, you mightn have noticed that Williams has often cited the aesthetics of early industrial on the visuals and artwork of Eyehategod, in particular the grisly images put forth by SPK, and the bleak, nihilistic music of SPK (as well as Throbbing Gristle) is obviously a primary influence on the warped, deformed electronics that Williams and McKern create as The Guilt Of. The sound is at times comparable to early industrial works like Information Overload Unit, but Williams's hysterical, ragged screams and the occasional distorted guitars give this a weird sludgy metal feel that creeps in from time to time. The combination of primitive industrial, fractured sludge metal guitar slop, and noise/sample collage that appears on these six tracks makes for some strange, drugged soundscaping, with all of the dark, nihilistic imagery and atmosphere that permeates all of Williams's work. Simple plodding drum machines spit out repetitive beats that throb underneath the filthy droning buzz of synthesizers and traces of fractured melodies spinning within the murk; the background is alive with creaking metallic noise and gurgling Moog-like bass. The industrial dirges are creepy and minor key, grim death-marches over minimal electro thump, shafts of synth strings and searing, distorted synth sludge blasting upwards, and blown out guitar noise writhing and convulsing around Williams's gnarled, nightmarish lyrics, which he vomits and howls out, making this at times veer into a kind of sludgy power electronics assault. The first few tracks are all bent, plodding industrial atavism, but later the disc moves into delirious collages of spoken word over dark industrial noisescapes, and sampled Japanese flute melodies, tape noise, and mangled synths on "Allergic To The Infamous Healer". The track "Void Of Regressions" is a bizarre cacophony of Skullflowery guitar noise, drugged chanting, primitive electro rhythms, chugging metal guitar, swirling electronics and blackened vokills, one of the heavier and more hellish tracks here, and "Mechanics Of The Unheard Catalyst" delivers another weird hybrid of formless metal and old school industrial with it's meandering metallic guitar wandering over piles of looped rhythmic samples and thick synth squelch, buzzing drones and fucked-up, processed power electronics and damaged machinery; later, a fractured drum loop comes in, almost like an old school breakbeat, while a guitar shreds in the distance, as the song devolves into a clanking industrial groove. The frustrated, hopeless vibe ends with the droning electronic noise, feedback, and murky synths of the final song "Words Of The Given Past", with more monstrous, blackened growling vokills, chiming melodies, ominous whispers, looped sampled voices and bits of Willaims's spoken word. This sort of hallucinatory, mangled industrial has some of the mutant industrial vibe as some of Maniac's recent recordings with Sehnsucht and Andrew Lilles, but it's nastier stuff, with a feverish sickness seething beneath their sputtering machines and slithering sample-ridden electronic creep. Limited to 200 copies, in jewel case packaging.
MASTURBATORY DYSFUNCTION Getting Caught CD-R (Bloodlust!)
Total synthesizer destruction. Getting Caught is the first release from Seattle's Masturbatory Dysfunction, a one-woman synth-noise outfit who debuts here with eight lengthy tracks of crunchy electronic abuse that falls somewhere in between minimal death industrial and extreme synth blast. This stuff is as burly as Sixes, with lots of cold droning synthesizer buzz and sinister dronescapes surrounded with a strange spaciousness, the result of the material having been recorded in a music retail store; apparently, the lady who's behind Masturbatory Dysfunction would go into a major music equipment store in Seattle on her lunch break and blast out walls of noise on the synthesizers that the store had on display, which she would record on a portable recording device. There were several of these "recording sessions" that produced the source material for this album, some of which had to be obnoxiously loud and grating, and yet she managed to assemble all of this material without getting kicked off the premises. The end material was later digitally edited and organized, and mastered at abusive volume levels. It's wild that she was able to pull this off without getting the bum's rush, because a lot of this material is seriously abrasive. The title Getting Caught is an obvious allusion to her surreptitious recording techniques, but it also has creepier, more sinister connotations with tracks like "It Was A Mistake ", "Late Night Filth" and "Bye Mom". Sound wise, the tracks almost feel like field recordings at times, spacious and organic due to the synthesizers blending with the natural room ambience, but as the pieces move through grim, minimal minor-key chordal dirges and clouds of crackling high end static, they become punishing full-bore distortion assaults, walls of overdriven distorted synth shaped into crushing throbbing rhythms and brutal turbulent noise, weighted down with some heavy duty low-end turbine violence. Hypnotic, brain-flattening powerdrone and grim rhythmic plod combines with blasts of spastic 8-bit video game chaos and crushing static hum. The last track is the least brutal, almost pretty actually; a series of very minimal two-note melodies and sustained drones fuse into an oscillating chordal flux, which at first is droning and hypnotic, but gets heavier later on as thick choppy buzzing builds into a massive amplified engine roar. This disc is a powerful piece of industrial synth abuse, and is another excellent dose of extreme electronics for fans of the Bloodlust! aesthetic.
