Session XIII: [Diagnose: Lebensgefahr, Sick Seed, Vegas Martyrs]

We get it son, you're bat-shit crazy. We knew that much from your ball-shrinking vocal performance on Silencer's Death Pierce Me and those messed-up photoshoots in the accompanying booklet where you were wrapped and bandaged - pig legs and all.  And just to make sure that every neuron in that brain of yours has gone completely haywire you present us with the poisonous extract of your 'let me express myself' therapy sessions at Dept. 57 of Växjö Psychiatric ward; to wit, a 68-minute injection of ambient electronica/noise - both atmospheric and dissonant in turns - while you painfully and anxiously anticipate that final psychotic schism with reality. Ok, maybe I'm getting a bit too cheesy here but the point is Diagnose: Lebensgefahr ‎Transformalin (Autopsy Kitchen, 2007) is decent stuff - definitely on a level higher than most black metal side projects that sprout up like mushrooms these days. Just maybe, maybe, there's actually something very wrong going on here.

Caligula031, Bizarre Uproar and now Sick Seed's The Great Corrupter (F&V, 2012; CD). It's official:  Filth & Violence releases are fast becoming my favourite Finnish export. Visceral, ear-grating electronics for those warm, Chrismassy nights by the crackling fireplace. It even comes in an appropriately low-budget/monochrome packaging for that extra touch of unabashed seediness. Indulge in the filth. You know you want to.

Essentially what Vegas Martyrs did on Choking Doberman (Kitty Play, 2005; 51 pink/red covers (shown)) was to take some basic semi-improvised guitar riffs (emotively catchy and consonant to the point where they would otherwise fit rather nicely as the verses for some obscure BM / punk crossover piece)  mercilessly granulate them through a blender of harsh electronic scuzz and 'overdriven-to-fuck' noise extremities, and then scoop up whatever bile survived the process. What we get on our end is a raw and bitter 7" seemingly the output of some sweaty all-night amphetamine binge using recording equipment even Fenriz would piss on. Structurally skeletal and percussively autistic; black metal never sounded so abused and revived at the same time.

.eof