Are You Morbid?

SUTCLIFFE JÜGEND - The Victim As Beauty

Have you been very, very bad? Do you need to be aurally flogged for your sins? I hope not, because not only does that make you some kinda sick, masochistic twit, but probably a Catholic as well (my condolences if this be the case). Sutcliffe Jügend, taking their moniker from the charming Peter Sutcliffe, were perhaps the most disturbing exponents of the early Power Electronics movement-- there is little chance to catch your breath, brutal frequencies pummel you into submission in waves; Seldom are light/dark dynamics used to set you up for the next bout of soul-rape... I mean, why mess with a good thing, right?

Born as an offshoot of your friends & mine, Whitehouse -- SJ's Kevin Tomkins was early member-- they gained infamy for the legendary 1982 ten-cassette box set, "We Spit on Their Graves," (which I must shamefully admit I only own four of) an endurance test in extreme noise terror without equal-- and that includes the works of any modern purveyors of the sound be it Grunt, Deathpile or Bloody-Minded. Yes, along with partner-in-grime, Paul Taylor, Tomkins set the bar pretty high for subsonic repulsion-- which is mebbe why they took a break for nearly a decade, returning in 1995 to inflict more torture upon us with "The Victim As Beauty."

Here, they examine the anatomy of murder which is split into five distinct phases: "Abduction," "Fear & Anticipation," "Humiliation," "Torture & Death" and mercifully, the "Cold Aftermath." Unlike cartoonish grindcore bands mining the same turf, Sutcliffe Jügend's music(k) is genuinely terrifying and unnerving-- if I wasn't an armchair student of the psychopathic mind, it would be easy to believe that the twitching, throbbing (and extremely well-recorded) squalls of white noise presented here are the sadistic impulses flooding through the brain of the nameless predator profiled here. It's about as close to feeling the cold, clammy hands of death around your throat that you'll ever wanna experience until Your Time Comes. In short, the soundtrack for a snuff film that hasn't been made yet (at least we hope not don't we? Don't We??!).

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