KORPERSCHWACHE - Evil Walks CD/DIGITAL OUT FEBRUARY 1st, 2011
'Evil Walks' is the first widely available cd release for Crucial Blast from Korperschwache after almost a decade of smaller, limited-run discs released through the label's Crucial Bliss sub-imprint. It's also the most focused work yet from this utterly demented Texas outfit that started out in the mid 90s as a pure noise project but gradually evolved into this weird, lumbering black-dirge that we hear now. The eight songs that make up 'Evil Walks' feature the signature Korperschwache moves: thumping minimal drum-machine pound courtesy of the relentlessly decisive Doktor Omega, droning dissonant riffs that veer from hypnotic noise to dismal quasi-black metal buzz, RKF's narcoleptic croaking and malevolent sneer bathed in reverb and amp skuzz, guitars humming and droning against cranked-up amps while creepy news sound bites, the distant sad howling of wolves and ear-piercing screams drift across the background, songs like the sprawling eleven minute 'The City Of Lost Girls' and 'Me And You And A Can Of Gasoline' crawling all soft and solemn through clouds of deep bass buzz and those weird sing-song ghoul-snarls and trance-states of repetitive slow-motion industrial beats, while 'Heaven's Gate' hurtles through a primitive scum-thrash assault of clanking drums, noise, simple punky riffing and distant howls that explodes into a washed out smear of overdriven blast beats and dreamy major key guitar.
Strange post-punk reverberations rumble all throughout this disc, nothing new to those who are familiar with the myriad other Korperschwache discs that have come out since 2001 when RKF first began flirting with his odd mix of simple, mesmeric gloom-guitar and black mechanical slime, but it's never sounded better to my ears than it does here, when the music forms into this stoned blackened hypno-rock thing, the buzzing guitars and acid-scorched melodies looping over the skittery industrial beats and weird dubbed-out snares and concussive Godflesh-esque rhythms, turning into something that sounds remarkably like a mutant cross between late-80s British psych/drone rockers Loop and those notorious improv-black metal freakazoids Abruptum. A comparison that I've used before when trying to describe the thumping psychedelic graveyard din of Korperschwache, certainly, but it's never been more relevant than it is here. A warped, blasted beauty shining through rotting shadows and rapidly declining emotional states. A series of ecstatic demon zone-outs. A hallucinatory strain of necro drone-rock. It's not black metal, but Korperschwache's 'Evil Walks' is definitely recommended to fans of the demented fringes of underground blackness inhabited by like-minded bands like Utarm, Wrnlrd, Charnel House, Diapsiquir, Brobdingnagian, Mamaleek, Wormsblood and Lonesummer. Comes in a full color digipack with illustrations by Nicole Boitos.
DEMONOLOGISTS - Miscarriage Of The Soul LIMITED EDITION DISC/CHAPBOOK SET OUT FEBRUARY 1st, 2011
The latest assault from the Crucial Blaze series. 'Miscarriage Of The Soul' is a new full-length from the Indiana blacknoise duo Demonologists, whose lineup includes a former member of cult black metal weirdoes Ensepulchred; this band has been possessing the sound system at Crucial Blast over the past year, with releases like their split with Blue Sabbath Black Cheer and the Sermons Of Death And Eternal Damnation tape that recently came out on Waves Of Decay getting mucho play. Their grim, malevolent noisescapes are as extreme as it gets, going beyond mere industrial black noise into Merzbow-style levels of ultra violent electronic destruction. This is ritualistic deathworship rendered through howling, smoking amplifiers, extreme pedal abuse, and hateful vocalizations, equal parts infernal power electronics, obliterated black metal buzz, and crushing harsh industrial noise. Total nihilism. Absolute misanthropy.
'Miscarriage Of The Soul' features five tracks of this nuclear strength sonic hate, and be warned, this is not for wimps. Beginning with opener 'Necro Prayers', the band descends into an inferno of seething HNW that masks the sound of eerie chiming ambience and reverberating gongs, an ominous black ambience veiled by corrosive hiss, revealing stretched out minor key melodies bathing in the black coruscating fire. On the following track 'Chalice Of Snake Venom And Piss', that metallic creaking dissonance is first to appear, joined by a soft downpour of fuzz and crackle, but within moments it becomes swallowed up within a crushing monstrous wall of black noise; you can hear bits of vague minor key creep, horrific industrial chaos and screeching demonic vokills all along the periphery of this howling maelstrom of distortion and static, the sounds constantly struggling to rise through the impenetrable ocean of amplifier filth, like the sounds of hell itself obscured by the roar of a volcanic eruption. The blackened noise of Wold is one reference point for what Demonologists are doing here, but this goes much deeper into pure noise.
Then suddenly halfway through the track, the noise completely drops out, and it's just an expanse of dark ambience and strange, dissonant processed strings that lasts for a moment; and almost as quickly as it appeared, it's devoured by the raging noise, which now becomes much more static and dense, the various sounds within it pushed even deeper, with just traces of them bleeding through, the final five minutes essentially becoming a pure wall of hiss and static. On 'Suicide Stench', however, the band summons creepy repetitive melodies up through the swirling grit, looped pianos and strings surrounded on all sides by a massive whirling cloud of static, sounding as if we're listening to a horror movie score being played underneath a Vomir disc, like a nightmarish orchestral/HNW piece.
'The Blood Of Black Wolves' follows suit, combining a dense, suffocating noise wall with shimmering ominous drones and minor key melody, creating a really psychedelic effect as the different sounds merge together and form auditory hallucinations; this stops at the six minute mark, the harsh noise disappearing and replaced with just the nightmarish looped melodies and mysterious textural sounds panning from speaker to speaker and whirling through the darkness. The title track comes last, beginning with a minimal organ drone; then a pounding drum beat appears, joined with droning strings and swells of metallic synth for a moment, but this lasts only briefly. A minute later, it explodes back into churning noise, with loud coruscating drones running through the storm of blackened noise wall, bits of suspenseful orchestral sound bleeding through, later erupting into a chorus of horrific screams while the buzzing noise rages all around; in the final minutes of this track, the noise once again drops out, and it's just legions of screaming voices trapped in infinite suffering, slowly fading out as the album comes to a close. 'Miscarriage Of The Soul' also includes a twenty-eight page black and white chapbook filled with crepuscular visions and nightmare delirium from the band: strange abstract photo-collages, twilight photography, cobwebbed basements, death totems, and portraits of decomposition are all collected here. The package comes in a clear dvd-style library case, and also contains a vinyl Demonologists sticker and a 1" badge, and is issued in a hand-numbered edition of 250 copies.