'Fuck you' can be one of the greatest statements in the English language. It's where you set the limits, where whatever individuality you take pride in can be defended against impending waves of conformity, where convention can be snickered at, paradigms demolished - both socially and musically. So it's only natural that I love bands like these guys were they shove gritty, raw realism straight in your face like there's no tomorrow. I guess this is what made Crucifix so special: direct, unadulterated immediacy - all the rest is escapism, plain and simple. Fair enough. Dehumanisation (Corpus Christii, 1983 (LP) / Southern Records, 1994 (CD)) is not only the seminal showcase of all the aforementioned but on top of that it grips you by the balls with sheer emotion - Sothira's (himself a victim of the atrocities so indignantly condemned on this release) anger-drenched vocal delivery being the case in point. Intro song "Annihilation" was also adapted by A Perfect Circle on Emotive but here in its original incarnation is that much more compelling. Revered within the hardcore punk scene for a reason.
I'll come right off the bat and just say it: for people not acquainted with this particular genre, Sutcliff Jügend's When Pornography Is No Longer Enough (Death Factory, 1998) is an audial experience only marginally preferable to an appointment with a heavily inebriated dentist or ramming a metal wire up your eye socket. And this is not just charming hyperbole thrown around to make a point. I'm actually quite serious. Forget any semblance of melody, rhythmical structure, harmonic consonance - everything is sucked into a swirling cacophonous vortex of incredibly harsh feedback, screetching frequencies (ever scratched your nails on a chalk board? oh yeah) only occasionally protruded by Kevin Tomkins' (of Whitehouse 'fame') psychotic screaming. After a few minutes the human brain itself declares sensory overload on its systems, synapses are frantically firing in complete aberrance in an effort to make sense of this vicious attack on the senses. I have to admit though: I found all of this quite amusing, if not down right intriguing. Whatever you want to call it: an audial experiment for altered states, a post-modernist exercise in anti-music, an artistic statement, two guys just taking the piss - whatever it is, it's here. And it's not going away.
Plunged head-first into the nether-regions of the Unconscious; whispers mockingly caressing my ears; an elegy of primal terror in tribal rhythms; cavernous realities of unmentionable entities; a wicked dance of unclaimed nightmares. Oh but for the blissful nullity of sweet repose! No light, no escape: claustrophobic, unsettling ambient making for the most fitting soundtrack to my insomnia.
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