Bereft – Your Messiah Will Fail CDR
Bereft – Your Messiah Will Fail CDR
Your Messiah Will Fail is a New England project that consists of Peter Lee (patron of Force of Nature Productions and former member of :MOMENT:) and Andy Grant (patron of Danvers State Recordings and sole member of The Vomit Arsonist). What happens when these two heavy-weights of noise collaborate? Basically one of the most intense noise and power electronics albums to hit my stereo for a while.
The first two tracks here are completely devastating. “Hidden Agenda” within seconds is balls deep in blasts of in-your-face screeching and distorted noise with gruff vocals screaming on top to form a rough power electronics experience. Oddly placed at second in the lineup is the title track “Your Messiah Will Fail” which is also the longest track on the album clocking in at no less than 15 minutes. Thankfully this is also the best track here starting off with a heavy drone that features some very detailed and interesting feedback interruptions that purely sound like nothing I’ve heard before. The track is long but doesn’t ever feel like it’s meandering because each moment heightens the tension-release of the composition until finally I find myself in a rhythmic torrent and winds of distorted noise proving to be an intense destructive force. I really can’t get over how great this track is, it just destroys me.
The next two tracks “Just One Bullet” and “No Change in Sight” are a little more freeform but still retain the burliness of Bereft’s aggressive sound with perhaps a little more experimentation. “Grinding Out” follows suit and is a meandering wall of monolithic harsh noise. Finally things are reeled in once again with “A Wall of Promises” which features a rhythmic pulse of cut up noise and some harmonic synth lines somewhat reminding me of Steel Hook Prostheses, yet another solid track on the album.
“No Choice/Victim” marks the beginning of the end with a subtle pulse joining whining feedback and more high-pitched vocals screams tilting more toward a Sutcliffe Jugend reference. It works on the same level with raw low-end blasts and the slowly morphing filters providing a great gesture to accentuate the delayed layers of noise. Finally “Resolution” breaks in to close out the disc and immediately reminds me a lot of the title track with it’s droning hums and odd feedback harmonies which eventually work up into some strange meandering melody. I really enjoy how the inevitable degrading of the feedback signal leads into these almost watery textures and finally to a dull lo-fi pulse which eventually leads to an unexpected synthesized serial-sounding textures that sound like it could be right out of a 70s psych-out movie. Point and case; it’s a unique and unpredictable closer that is effective and creative.
On top of all this the production quality is so burly with intense mids and highs and unbelievable lows. The recording is loud as fuck and with such intense aggressive noise Your Messiah Will Fail is an extremely brutal album but also one that has thought and some interesting twists and turns behind it. It’s a detailed effort and takes at least a few listens to scrape the surface of what’s going on here. Excellent work.
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