A Splice of Life

FACTRIX - Scheintot (1981)

As Thee Olde Adage goes, "if influence translated into record sales," (see: Underground, Velvet) San Francisco-based industrial pioneers woulda raked in some 'o the ducats pocketed by the likes of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. As it is, they barely had a pot to piss in during their brief existence that lasted from 1978-83. Comprised of Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph T. Jacobs, all of whom had done time in thee equally underrated avant-garde electronic outfit, Patrick Miller's Minimal Man, they would leave us with "Scheintot" and "California Babylon," a collaborative effort with Monte Cazazza, before vanishing forever.

Mebbe Ted Kaczynski, in his deluded, luddite way had a point-- technology does suck. With their manipulated tape loops, "found sounds" (tea kettles, pennywhistles and the like are credited as instruments), primitive synth-thud and buzzing moogs, Factrix still sound more groundbreaking--- but more importantly-- dangerous, than what passes for industrial music these daze. For example, "Ballad of the Grim Rider" (whatta title!) has an ethereal, yet churning mix of analog electronics and scraping, treated guitar that every one of those pathetic, digitized Marilyn Moronites should be striving for (alas, that would require far too much creativity on their parts, so I'll shaddap). And the vocals! Hazy, buried in the mix yet perfectly intelligible, they bring to mind the utterances of a disillusioned ghost railing against the stupidity of mortals... they ooze outta the din unlike any LP I've yet heard.

This is music best listened to when regaining yer bearings after a Lost Weekend. There's bottles of booze you don't remember drinking littering the living room, the ashtrays are overflowing and smoldering; mebbe even a few people sleeping on the floor whose names escape you... yet paradoxically, "Scheintot," in its otherworldly way, provides a psychological anchor to Terra Firma.

In comments.

Kick to Kill

TEST DEPT. - Beating the Retreat (1984)


Being a New World Man of thee Kanück Mütt persuasion, I have little to no grasp of the British class system. As far as I can figger-- at least where it is applied to underground musicians-- is that one should be "working class," not speak with a "posh accent" and for thee Love of Lucifer: no fooking way can you have attended a school where the tuition exceeds a few hundred pounds. Also I've duly noted that British folks sho' like to yammer on about it-- especially Oi! bands and Ray Davies.

A lovely British um... "bird" once explained to me that Test Dept. were a hyper-liberal bunch whose songs tackled much of what I failed to understand above, even going so far as to collaborate with a Miner's Union Choir in support of their strike of 1984-- (at least I think that was the gist of it... she had a really heavy accent) and here I thought their lyrics were nothing more than monosyllabic utterances of cathartic rage. I mean, what was I supposed to think? These New Cross, London blokes used discarded hunks of scrap metal from local factories to create a pulverizing form of musique concrete that has since become the soggy, pre-packaged rebellion known as industrial music. Luckily, they sound nothing like the tripe the kids think is all "heavy" n' shit like Marilyn and Two-Inch Male (bet those guys went to Ivy League schools). Nope. Here's where the sheep get separated from the goats, matey. Ya got drill bits spinnin' into yer skull and tribal beats that sound like they were pounded out on the lids of barrels of toxic waste.

In comments.


CORONER - Death Cult Demo (1986)

{First off, inspiration for this entry goes to the lovely & talented Mogo for his recent post of this here band's "No More Color" LP}

Switzerland has given us quality, if not quantity-- ya got chocolate, watches, cheese, Hellhammer/Celtic Frost, Fear of God, Messiah, Samael before they went all techno-wimp, Jack & the Rippers, Negativ, Sperma, Glueams, garage-punk heroes the Sevens and a handful of hardcore bands I'm not in the mood to type right now. Oh... and these guys. Hailing from Zürich, Coroner would become renowned as virtuosos of thee highest order for thee bewildering complexity of LP's like "Mental Vortex" and the aforementioned "No More Color." In 1986 however, they were still primitive thrashers not unlike countrymen Hellhammer whose Tom G. Warrior provides the vocals for this here demo. The sound quality is crisp, and has that most excellent farty bass sound lovers of metal demo tapes have grown to love (or at least I have). Best of all, of the six tracks featured here, only "Spiral Dream" was ever given the full studio treatment (on their debut album).

Track list:

1. Spectators of Sin
2. Spiral Dream
3. Aerial Combat
4. The Invincible
5. Arrogance in Uniform*
6. Hate, Fire, Blood*

* = bonus tracks featuring Ron "Royce" Broder on vox.

In the comments.

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??!).

Sure ya wanna look in the comments?

Culturecide

SPK - Auto Da Fé

Long before Graeme Revell was seemingly providing the score for two-thirds of the films released since 1992, he was a humble orderly at an Aussie mental institution. Along with one of its patients, Neil Hill, he formed SPK (Sozialistisches Patienten Kollectiv, after a German terrorist organization) in 1978, making them one of the very first industrial acts. "Auto Da Fé" is collection of their singles, spanning from 1978-82. Thankfully, the tracks are presented chronologically, giving you a feel for the astoundingly rapid development of this amazing band.

The earliest cuts are almost indescribable as there are few touchstones to use as reference. Consisting of frenetic, thrashy punk coupled with the clanging of metal and shrieks of electronic sonic debris, masterpieces like "Slogun" and "Germanik" still sound extreme nearly three decades on-- rivaled only by perhaps the early works of Sutcliffe Jügend or Ramleh in sheer ferocity. As they progressed, a tribal, almost shamanistic quality began to manifest itself in their work-- the once shouted vocals became much more subdued, and the synths are used to provide melody instead of aural terror. These tracks are almost, dare I say, beautiful, with their stark, hypnotic atmosphere. They may lack the aural wallop their fist-in-the-teeth predecessors had, but they still kick the shit outta anything Depeche Mode ever did.

Look in the comments.

PETER SOTOS - Buyer's Market

Music is far from being my only hobby-- I spend countless hours as an armchair psychologist/criminologist, ceaselessly reading texts that make many people shrink away in horror. It's far more than simple morbid curiosity; I'm fascinated by the way that the put ourselves on a pedestal, thinking we're too "civilized" to indulge in the same repulsive acts that loathsome, "underdeveloped" creatures who murder strangers perform with impunity-- comfortably tucking away in our subconscious the thought that we somehow possess "higher moral standards." The truth is that we are a frail species, and were we to lose a sizable amount of the contentments that allow us to function as "normal," law-abiding citizens, who knows what we are capable of becoming? Would we have the desire to reap tenfold the pound of flesh that was stolen from us? Only the person with nothing left to lose knows for sure. Regardless, I'm not here to write a thesis about the darker side of human nature, so let's move on to Mr. Sotos.

You may remember him from his work with legendary power electronics unit Whitehouse, but these days he's what the hep cats like to call a "transgressive" writer-- meaning that he scribes about things Mommy wouldn't wantcha to read (for what it's worth, no less than the incredibly boring, though much admired in some circles, Jim Goad, once stated: "No one rapes a blank page like Sotos"). Every so often he puts out disturbing records like this one, recorded in 1992 with Steve Albini with the "producer" hat on. Let me make this very clear: this is not for those of you with a less-than-hardy constitution for human suffering. What Sotos examines here is the Culture of the Victim-- how family members left behind are manipulated by the media, and ultimately, how their identity is redefined in the process. If that sounds a bit high-falutin' for a record that is nothing more than snippets of interviews with the kinda dupes who make the Oprah-Maury-Phil rounds, I suggest you investigate this work. It is assembled for maximum impact, and, although I would be the first to agree that Mr. Sotos has more'n a few sadistic bones in his body, at least he's upfront about it, unlike the vultures who prey upon the broken souls featured here.

In comments.

VARIOUS - Für Ilse Koch

Leave it to Whitehouse's William Bennett to assemble a tribute to Ilse Koch, wife of Karl Koch, SS chief commander of Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald. Despite the contrived attempt to shock (no one still buys that neo-fascist bullshit they used to spew, do they?), this is an amazing compilation of electronic/industrial/outsider music before the aforementioned terms meant Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.

Apparently this fetches big $$$ on ebay these days.

Released in 1982.

Tracklist:

1. Imperial Japan - Under The Victory Banner
2. Musique Concret - Exit
3. Come - Come Sunday 2
4. Aleister Crowley - Nature Of The Beast
5. Nurse With Wound - Fashioned To A Device Behind A Tree
6. Consumer Electronics - Lebensraum
7. Leibstandarte SS - Plutoniumetrio
8. Charles Manson - Cease To Exist (Come Version)
9. Etat Brut - Necro
10. Viking DDV - Nordik Perversion
11. Whitehouse - Mind Phaser
12. Whitehouse - Anal American
13. Heinrich Himmler - Europe Lives

Look in comments.

Chromosome Damage

CHROME - Blood on the Moon

San Franciscan duo Damon Edge and Helios Creed, anxious to reproduce the music they heard when listening to Sabbath or Hawkwind on headphones under the influence of LSD, ended up becoming proto-industrial icons instead. Their utilization of every variety of octave divider, phaser and flanger to color their creations makes for a head-swirling experience-- with disembodied voices straight from Philip K. Dick's most nightmarish visions. Creed's commanding guitar leads, as inspired by warped psychedelia as by the then-burgeoning punk movement are sped up, slowed down-- mutated at will. They essentially took the sonic debris left in the wake of krautrock, Metal Machine Music and Beefheart and pushed the envelope as far as it could go with the primitive analog equipment they had at their disposal.

"Blood on the Moon," released in 1981, is as close as they would ever come to a conventional rock album, however tenuously. Although the arrangements are far more linear than on previous releases, this is still a prime example of what happens when you allow artists whose brains are heavily saturated with illicit substances into a recording studio: simple household sounds are fed through tape loops, transforming into extraterrestrial metal scrapings and buzzing locusts chewing on your medulla. What is most astounding is that the digital age has never produced anything as alien or disorienting as these sounds. Mebbe the technological advances have made it far too easy for modern musicians-- the superior equipment stunting their creativity? Whatever the case, I'll continue to feed my head with Chrome's Acid Punk long after the raver kids currently stomping to a feverish beat have 2.4 children and a white picket fence.

As always, look in the comments.

MONTE CAZAZZA - The Worst of

Don't cry to me if you're not the same "well-adjusted" little person you once were before being exposed to this recording. You are warned from the very beginning by a certain Dr. Alberti, that Monte Cazazza displays symptoms of "an unresolved Oedipal complex," that he is a hopeless pervert, a trafficker in cheap thrills and that his music is little more than "a sonic mess." How in the world would he come up with such a diagnosis? Monte, after all, indulged in only wholesome, All-American activities such as setting dead, maggot-infested cats on fire and building 15-foot high swastikas in his Arts & Crafts class. Somehow, he managed to also find the time to pioneer Industrial music-- coining the term as a matter of fact.

This collection of the self-styled cultural terrorist's "sonic messes" was compiled by none other than Brian "Lustmord" Williams, widely regarded as the godfather of the dark ambient genre, who has done his homework here: Cazazza is accompanied by members of Throbbing Gristle on "To Mom on Mother's Day," providing jarring blasts of synthesized hiss while he works through his "Oedipal complex" (?). Cosey Fanni Tutti contributes the nursery rhyme-like chant of "Mary Bell," a paean to the fabled British abused-child-turned-murderer (at the age of 11); "Rabid Rats" tells of the American Army releasing said creatures on the Vietcong (They'd stand up to be shot as rabies is a far more horrible way to die) with an unmistakable glee in his voice. The most powerful track is "A Snitch is a Snitch," an examination of the moral codes and value systems imposed upon us by religion & The Law, obviously heavily influenced by the writings of Crowley and Nietzsche-- which, as even the casual observer of early industrial culture knows, have become part & parcel of its philosophy (much as the "Übermensch" and the "Will to Power" have become components of Satanism-- particularly Lavey's Hollywood version).

The Industrial Culture Handbook once described his work as "insanity-outbreaks thinly disguised as art events," and even though I've eagerly allowed my ears and psyche to become susceptible to some of the most depraved exhibits of "creativity" known to our species, I can't say I disagree.

Look in the comments.

Caspar Brötzmann - Mute Massaker

There is nothing particularly "avant garde" or "groundbreaking" about the onslaught of drone projects spearheaded by the likes of SUCK O)))-- clever marketing there; somehow leaning your guitar against an amp for an hour and a half equates to "doom metal" to the hopelessly gullible. I must admit, forming a tribute band to Dylan Carlson's Earth is charmingly amusing-- but it yields about as much musical merit as a band devoted solely to covering John Lennon's "One Minute of Silence" (Greg & Steve: No need to thank me for the idea-- you can have it free of charge). Caspar Brötzmann, on the other hand, is a completely different animal.

Hailing from Berlin, Brötzmann comes from impeccable stock-- his father was legendary sax-honkin' jazz deconstructionist, Peter Brötzmann, whose vital LP, "Machine Gun" as well as his work with Sonny Sharrock in Last Exit, should be prominently displayed in your collection. Thus, it's no surprise that Caspar is a virtuoso of the highest order-- he, however, chose the guitar as his weapon of choice. Taking his cue from Norman Westberg's skull-crushing guit-mauling on the early Swans LP's, Brötzmann takes the humble six-string into uncharted vistas never imagined or possible in the hands of bedroom dronesters. Each excursion ("song" doesn't seem like the proper term) begins as a formless smattering of lightly-strummed guitar arpeggios, that, over time, morph into True Teutonic Noise Terror. Hendrix as re-imagined by Philip K. Dick? In the ballpark, but still sadly lacking.

The vocals are essentially an afterthought-- an opportunity to further punctuate the stop/start arrangements and monolithic riffing. You feel you're an uninvited guest at an atavistic ritual -- Robert Dammig's tribal yet precise drumming triggers memories you may or may not have actually experienced. That, with Brötzmann's variety of tonal flavors layered one upon the other, makes for a sometimes exhausting listen, but an adventure well worth revisiting if you allow yourself to completely succumb to it. Much like great sex, this music provides an outlet to make yourself disappear.

Wallowing available in the comments.

Lord of Chaos

BLOOD AXIS - The Gospel of Inhumanity

Undoubtedly, this will be the most controversial album I'll ever post. Blood Axis is the brainchild of Michael Moynihan, more infamous for his contribution to popular myth-- that being his tome on the Norwegian black metal scene, "Lords of Chaos", than for his music. Which is unfortunate, as "The Gospel of Inhumanity" is filled with a near-Wagnerian grandeur seldom achieved by musicians working within the rock (term used very loosely in this case) idiom. Incorporating Bach, Prokofiev, Nietzsche, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Manson and Ezra Pound may sound like a heady mix, yet Moynihan and collaborator Robert Ferbrache bring these diverse inspirations together seamlessly. The lyrics, when not provided by outside sources, are based upon philosophical Satanism, Ásatrú (Norse Paganism) and Social Darwinism. When such a cocktail is concocted, it stands to reason that fascists of every stripe would embrace it, and of course, they have. I, on the other hand, give not one iota of a fuck about anyone's perceived or outspoken politics. Moynihan, when pressed about his political ties, was once quoted as saying:

"Whether they're the Marxist/Communist/Socialist people who think that humans want to get along on a grand scale, or whether it's the Nazis, who think that if everyone was just of the same race, they'd all get along perfectly, or the anarchists, who think everyone would love to live this way if you just took away the police. They're all deluded. People should worry about what happens on their block. They should get along with their neighbors before they worry about the great ills of society and about telling someone who lives 200 miles away what to do."

Certainly that's a pretty vanilla response, not to mention the "right" one (no pun intended), but then again, I see no reason why he needs to justify anything or answer for anything. Nor should I be making apologies or excuses of my own. The bottom line is that should you allow yourself to succumb to the pleasures of this mini-symphony, it will change your life. For the better. It may be a lot of things, but it is NOT "white power" music.

If you're sitting on the fence or remain unconvinced, DO NOT proceed to the comments.