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Ultra//Vires-Black Snow
"Here's another private press CD-R release from the Ultra//Vires team that has been pulping our consciousness for the past few weeks. Black Snow is yet another short affair from the duo of Ryan and Jonathan, with two 8 minute tracks that capture Ultra//Vires's nasty free-sludge-noise drone in all of it's gruesome glory. And again, there's a bleak, ecological theme here, the harsh speaker-blowing vibrations evoking horrific images of houses stained in ash and industrial filth, and whole populations decimated by pollution. The first track, "Black Snow", is a chilling stream of corroded powerdrone, like a more industrialized Black Boned Angel with it's mix of roaring distortion, shimmering ambience, and buried harsh rhythms. The second, "Birth Defect", is a abrasive blowout of flinty feedback loops and rumbling vortex of distortion almost like a marching beat constructed from blocks of caustic Japanese style noise, breaking down at the end into a wheezing landscape of painful Scutopus/Prurient level sinewaves and machinelike scrapings. A brutal mind wipeout packaged in a cool silkscreened case blasted with metallic silver paint." . . . from crucialblast.net "...brutal noise doom. the end is near."(Matthew Reis) . . . from epicenesound.com "Elsewhere I moan about the neo-noise scene from the USA, and probably Ultra//vires is part of the same scene, but I must say that I quite enjoy the two releases they send here. The packaging is handmade, but thank god no paint was spilled on the CDR itself. I understand that Ultra//vires is a duo from Ohio. Black Snow' also has two tracks, but is at sixteen minutes even shorter. Here they use much more than on 'Land Cancer' guitars and amplification, which go into the direction of feedback of course. In the title piece this is done through a nice built up and keeping control of matters at hand. In 'Birth Defect' they start immediately with the full blown noise thing and that is then straight away the piece that was least appealing to me. But throughout these are both quite nice releases."(FdW) . . . from vitalweekly.net Ultra//Vires-Land Caner "This is the first disc we heard from the Ohio duo Ultra//Vires, which includes Ryan Faris formerly of the excellent Epicene Sound System label. Land Cancer, as the title might suggest, evokes all sorts of visions of urban decay and sprawl over the course of it's 20 minute duration, and starts off with an eerie noise/psych jam that loops some creepy elastic noise across a cobweb strewn meadow,like a sleepy Wolf Eyes stuck in a locked groove at 6am while birdsong begins to floats across the fields. Very cool. The second track begins similiarly, a subdued and improvised low-fi atmosphere punctured by clattering metal junk and corroded, barely recognizeable guitar/amp noise that slowly builds in volume and rumble until the drums appear, a crawling malignant trudge that oozes forward beneath a crumbling blanket of sludgy amplifier drone and toxic electronic vomit. We're reminded of a gnarly fusion between Midwestern noise damage and extreme sludge metal transmitted via free-improv means, highly recommended! The disc is packaged in one of the cooler handmade CD-R containers of recent memory, a painted canvas pouch that has been attached to a circuit board with the CD-R inside plus some textured silkscreened inserts." . . . from crucialblast.net "Elsewhere I moan about the neo-noise scene from the USA, and probably Ultra//vires is part of the same scene, but I must say that I quite enjoy the two releases they send here. The packaging is handmade, but thank god no paint was spilled on the CDR itself. I understand that Ultra//vires is a duo from Ohio. 'Land Cancer' is a twenty minute improvisation set in two parts played on percussion. Besides real cymbals and toms, there is what seems to me plastic and metal objects. In the first part things are quiet calm but in the second piece things go full on building towards a forceful crescendo, but it's not the usual harsh noise being spilled. More improvised than noise, and in a rather nice way. This is neo-noise to love...quite nice releases."(FdW) . . . from vitalweekly.net Robe-Trepanation "Recorded from 2002-2004, Robe's Trepanation is the sort of organic, crumbling drone we like to pipe into our craniums at maxmimum volume. The six tracks on this private-press CD-R crawl beneath the topsoil, feeling their way along assorted sub-frequencies using brittle tendrils of feedback and compressed distorted bass. It's a grim, earthen rattling that only at the very end begins to show signs of any sort of living pulse. We're not sure who or what is behind Robe, but this is killer stuff, like a dark, insectile mutant that has escaped from the guts of a buried Not Not Fun cassette. It sort of lurks near the vicinity of Luasa Raelon and Hive Mind style sludge electricty. Unbeleivably tactile packaging this time too, with the front of the jewel case holding a handmade Thai birdsnest paper insert that gives the package the look and feel of a gardener's Necronomicon." . . . from crucialblast.net "...these releases don't have that much information. Nothing on Robe actually, except the tracktitles and the fact that is was recorded in 2006. Whatever it is that Robe uses is hard to tell. My best guess is that he uses radio waves fed through analogue synthesizers which are all tuned down to the lowest bass possible, perhaps with the addition of some sound effects. There isn't much difference in the six tracks on offer here. A slow sound that rattles, seems to break and rumbles along the depth of the earth. Ground sounds. Quite nice, but because of the lack of variety and the length of it all, perhaps a bit too much of a repetition. The lengthy 'After Three Weeks, Shiny Black 1' could have been skipped and saved the release. Nice cover actually."(FdW) . . . from vitalweekly.net " Capital Hemorrhage-Attempted Abduction "The opening shot from the Dayton-based Capital Hemorrhage, a guitar/drums duo made up of Ryan Faris & Jonathan Prunty, who are also the driving force behind free/sludge/industrialists ULTRA//VIRES. This project sort of works in a different vibe, but it's just as heavy and destroyed. The band vomits incomprehensible rivers of abrasive free-noise-rock language all over the course of the disc's 24 minute improv assault, obviously entitled "Attempted Abduction". It's a dynamic jam as they move from clattery free-jazz forms and slack string squelch to blasts of spontaneous thrash to massively distorted garage/drone/narco rock raveups and back to burning, amplifier melting drones. Heavy aggro improv along the lines of a sludgier, looser, brattier Flying Luttenbachers or Borbetomagus stripped of brass, gnawing on about 15 years worth of Earache Records vinyl and scrawled manifestos of European Improv. Comes in a cool, minimalist screenprinted white wallet sleeve with insert card." . . . from Crucial Blast the men of ultra//vires went rock... well doom rock really... well doom like early swans... well swans with sicker tone... this is an early recording... guitar / drum improvs... a little less heavy than usual...(Matthew Reis) . . . from epicenesound.com "Capital Hemmorrhage is a guitar and percussion player, Jonathan Prunty and Ryan Faris. It was recorded live to four track it says and it lists eight tracks but there is one on the CDR. Twenty four minutes in total of improvised music, crude, loud, quiet, soft. Capital Hemmorrhage move all over the place. Hard to see it as eight separate tracks but as one whole it is a concentrated outburst of energy. The guitar is scraped, goes out to feedback and explored for tonal qualities. The drums support that and seem to be less explored than the drums. It plays wild, free tunes. For those who loved wild free and sheer improvisation, this is a fine stop."(FdW) . . . from vitalweekly.net Acid Mouth-Acid Mouth "We just busted open a new box of Outfall Channel releases and related stuff this week, which is always a cause for celebration - these Cincy mutants have been releasing some of my favorite bizarro noise/grind/scum tapes and cd-rs of the past year, like those killer discs and cassingles from the dayglo avant-noisecore troupe Hentai Lacerator, that rad-looking handcrafted cd-r box from Fields Of Blood (and the blackened free-murk-doom transmissions captured on the disc itself), Robe's charred and rusted black rumbling, and the jacked-up, freeform hardcore jazz improv destruction of Capital Hemorrhage, all of which have been packaged up in cool, hand assembled sleeves and cases covered in all kinds of strange, tactile materials. Awesome to look at and hold, and thoroughly mindscrambling to listen to. Outfall Channel might just be the coolest DIY hardcore noise label out there right now. So I get extremely stoked whenever new stuff arrives here from those guys. This new batch of stuff includes a new 7" split with Hentai Lacerator and Gaybomb, the fucking terrific debut issue of the new zine Sacrifice, a killer new disc from Robe called Depth that delivers more of that mysterious artists black sonic goo, and this caustic slab of severe drug feedback and harsh electronic rhythms from Acid Mouth, which from what little I have been able to learn about the project, is another project from whoever is behind Robe. This self-titled CD-R moves from pulsating, fastpaced feedback manipulations to harshly distorted drum corps workouts, slipping some heavily narcotized vocal loops and reverb channel powerfucks in amongst the blasts of psychedelic amp squeal and pummeling rhythms rattling away behind a thick veil of white noise. It's a pretty damaging noise excursion somewhere in between old school Test Dept. and some of the nastier Broken Flag stuff like early Ramleh, with song's titled "Electronic Bukkake", "Cum On Glass", and "Fuck It Let's Huff" to outline Acid Mouth's depraved visions. Packaged in a cd wallet that is covered in some kind of thick paint gunk over bits and pieces of vaguely vaginal illustrations that altogether looks nicely twisted, with a silkscreened insert foldout inside." . . . from crucialblast.net Fields Of Blood-Fields Of Blood "...vile." . . . from epicenesound.com "I've gone on at length in these pages about my love for various labels, and the Ohio DIY imprint Outfall Channel has been mentioned more than once whenever I get to gushing about those assorted imprints that I follow with a fevered glee. Run by the two guys behind the free-noise/hardcore band Capital Haemorrhage, Outfall Channel has leaked a pestilent batch of subterranean noise-brut offerings that are all wildly different but all deliver the same level of subsonic punch to my solar plexus that I'm just not gonna find from more "respected" labels on the scene. Shit like Hentai Lacerator and Robert Inhuman is on a whole nother level of raw, and it's zero-bullshit, ecstatic noise violence like that that helps to keep me puffin' along when I'm subjected to the constantly increasing onslaught of pseudo-professionalism in "underground" music that I witness on a daily basis. Where my ranting is leading to is my unfettered love for this little black box called "Fields Of Blood". At first glance, it looks like an arts and crafts project, a 6" x 5" cardboard jewel box, all black, with black ink silkscreened onto it; inside is a nest of straw, painted in hideous black and glued delicately to the inside of the box - on the underside of the lid sits a black disc, attached to the lid by a plastic hub. This is one of the coolest looking handmade packages we've seen in many moons. The point of all of this seems to be rural decay, fields of wheat turning black under a toxic sun, the sky burning red and scorching the ground, and to this end the disc captures a horrific void of ultra low-fi, subsonic dronemetal scum, thick tentacles of blackened guitar/amp dirge rumbling like a cloud of poison over whatever field produced the straw found in this box, electronic skree and tortured vocals burrowing into rotting amplifiers. A missing link between Sunn O)))/Earth dronemetal and savage Broken Flag industrial slop, totally coarse and lobe-massaging skuzz drone- I love this. Heavy, noisy, and not for sissies. I don't have numbers for this release, but based on the ridiculously labor-intensive packaging, I'm guessing that there are severaly limited numbers of this release available." . . . from Crucial Blast Hentai Lacerator-Covered In Fun "40 blazing free-noisecore jams vomiting out in a neon green spew from the collective cracked skulls of Hentai Lacerator! It's the Capital Hemmorhage guys with Robert Inhuman on vocals, and they cram in a ton of microsecond blasts in just 17 minutes with this low-fi collection. Free jazz drumming, incoherent muttering and childlike crying, nasty abstract doom, dayglo spunk and total blurr grind guitar all flying around in a mess of improvised, in-the-moment blastnoise destruction with song titles all ending in "Suck"..."Gargantuan Suck", "Pound Puppy Suck", "Doomsday Suck", you get the picture. Think Gerogerigegege, modern improv, 7 Minutes Of Nausea, Borbetomagus, Hanatarash, and old Earache grindcore as reference points. We love this stuff! Obviously if you're looking for more "structure" in yer grind, this probably isn't for you, but fans of free-noise/grind fusion will love this shit. The Cap Hemmorhage guys released this through their own Outfall Channel imprint in a single run of 100 copies, and it looks awesome, packaged in a bright green spraypainted wallet that has their wicked logo and artwork screenprinted on the front, with the silkscreened disc and a bright yellow xeroxed insert inside." . . . from crucialblast.net Robe-"Depth" "We just busted open a new box of Outfall Channel releases and related stuff this week, which is always a cause for celebration - these Cincy mutants have been releasing some of my favorite bizarro noise/grind/scum tapes and cd-rs of the past year, like those killer discs and cassingles from the dayglo avant-noisecore troupe Hentai Lacerator, that rad-looking handcrafted cd-r box from Fields Of Blood (and the blackened free-murk-doom transmissions captured on the disc itself), Robe's charred and rusted black rumbling, and the jacked-up, freeform hardcore jazz improv destruction of Capital Hemorrhage, all of which have been packaged up in cool, hand assembled sleeves and cases covered in all kinds of strange, tactile materials. Awesome to look at and hold, and thoroughly mindscrambling to listen to. Outfall Channel might just be the coolest DIY hardcore noise label out there right now. A new Robe disc came in with the latest stash of Outfall Channel goodies, it's titled Depth and it comes in the raddest package of the whole shipment. Robe's last CD-R Trepanation was filled with massive lo-fidelity psych-drones, huge rumbling expanses of subterranean creep and blackened earthy vibrations, like laying down in the middle of a forest and pressing your ear to the mouldy soil of the forest floor and hearing the sound of Sunn O))) performing deep below in some cavernous recess, the grinding low-end guitars seeping upwards through a veil of rotting leaves and crumbling organic matter, coming out on the other side as a muffled, murky grub roar. Very cool black drones that reminded me of stuff like Luasa Raelon and Hive Mind, but heavier and scuzzier, and packaged inside of a stunning package that consisted of a jewel case filled with handmade Thai birdsnest paper. Now Robe has returned with another handmade disc, this one consisting of a single 72 minute long track. And again, it's an ever-shifting sea of dark heavy drone, shifting from massive wheezing textures to deep murky rumbling layered with the sound of Gregorian chants softened and blurred beneath the creeping glacial ooze of Robe's slow motion feedback and monstrous breathing sounds. Towards the middle of the track, the sounds of swirling pipe organs appear and are joined again by those haunting devotional chants, only to be broken apart by fluttering, oscillating feedback and stretches of tense silence that reach out to the very end of Depth. It's a creepy, often beautiful slab of drone noise that sounds pretty damn immense when listened to on headphones. The disc is an all-black CD-R, and it's packaged inside of a black and gold screenprinted insert sleeve that fits inside of a slightly larger wallet sleeve that is covered in black paint and some kind of thick papyrus-type material. It's kind of a bitch to get the hang of getting the disc in and out of the package, but it looks cool as hell." . . . from crucialblast.net Hentai Lacerator-Sugarsplash! "Out of all of the Outfall Channel related projects that I've been exalting here in the corridors of Crucial Blast, my favorite is probably Hentai Lacerator. An unapologetically harsh and art-damaged project that is a conceptual fusion of underground porn and Japanese Ero culture and frenetic hardcore grind, the uninitiated might assume from their name and the wonderfully goofy and explicit artwork that Hentai Lacerator is connected to the "pornogrind"/goregrind scene, but that's actually far from the case. Musically, Hentai Lacerator mash up an assortment of raging old school hardcore riffs, sludgy West Coast powerviolence a la Spazz and Despise You, weirdo noises and demented vocal sounds, and dissonant riffs slashed out over churning rhythms that come off like yer hearing an Am Rep band being forcefed a bucket of coke and then set on fire. Hentai Lacerator is essentially the members of Capital Hemorrhage backing the throat spasms of Robert Inhuman, the guys behind the DIY gabber/grind force Realicide, and you can chalk up the brutal thrash to the Cap Hemorrhage guys knowing their way around a crushing riff. The group had put out a couple of home recorded efforts in the past year that I thought were righteously ripping, but it's only now that they are presenting their first actual "studio" recording, the 12-song, 20 minute EP Sugarsplash, their most focused and faceripping effort. Man, when they kick into the detuned thrash overdrive on songs like "Slimebeast" and "Blobbo" and the shrieking, whimpering carnage of the disc opener "Killed By Cum", I feel like I'm being smashed in the eye by some mutant two headed conglom of Man Is The Bastard and Unsane. You may have noticed the preoccupation that Hentai Lacerator has with gooiness, a fetish that extends to every track and indeed the very spirit of the band, that of carnal powerviolence drenched in green slime and bukkake annihilation. But where yer typical mindless gore/porno grind outfit seems to revel in misogynistic hatred and violence, Hentai Lacerator's visions are an orgy of dripping ghost orgasms and impossible tentacle penetration and other fantastic sexual absurdities that are culled from the slimiest side of Japanese Ero art and media. Wild shit, done up in dayglo colors and crazed artwork that you do NOT want your parents to get their hands on. Add to that Robert Inhuman's nutso vocal hystrionics that go from shrieking hardcore screech to bizarre whimpering noises and other weirdness, and you've got a raging slice of slippery, oddball blastcore that extreme HC fans will dig. Especially if you like slime. And porn. And slime porn. The silkscreened disc comes in a bright lime-green DVD case that also holds a large foldout poster/lyric sheet plus a cool 16 page booklet filled with artwork and thoughtful, sex-positive fanzine-style interviews that Robert Inhuman conducted with porn stars like Amber Evans, Petra Verkaik, Taylor Wane, and others." . . . from crucialblast.net After seeing vocalist Robert Inhuman's band "Realicide" in July 2007, I was captivated by the music he created. Around November 2007, I was introduced to Hentai Lacerator, and began to hear talk about an album called "Sugarsplash!". After searching and searching, I found that the album wasn't even out yet. Well, January and the new year roll around, and thanks thanks to Robert Inhuman, the album is now in my hands. I'll begin with the packaging.....these guys really went all the way on this one! To start the album comes in a green DVD case, with a pink insert featuring an illustration of a girl passionately holding a slimebeast (Slimer, the Ghostbusters charcter, seems to be somewhat of a theme on this album). The disc itself is silkscreened pink with black text, done by Outfallchannel. The quality is very good (I have a few other releases screened by Outfallchannel, these guys are great). The album comes with 2 inserts - one is a booklet featuring interviews Robert did with porn stars Amber Evans, Petra Verkaik, Belladonna, and Taylor Wane (porn also seems to me another theme of the album, this shit's PORNCORE) among super cool illustrations by Robert, the staff list, thanks list, etc. My favorite part of the booklet is the front cover, which features slimer perfoming a sex act on what looks to be a teenage girl (think of the front cover of the album, but more graphic). The second insert is a poster, featuring lyrics on one side, and an illustration of the different types of slimebeasts on the back. If I wasn't such a completeist i'd hang it up in my room. Now onto the music. This is an exteremly great album. Everything about the music contained within just makes me enjoy it. I recevied this in mid January, and still play it a few times a week. The lyrics are incredible, like nothing i've ever seen before. "where will I live? I am a prostitute! Can I call you 'cunt gem'? we are all prostitutes! this is an advertisement for the toys beneath my skirt" The track names also captivated me, with titles such as "Killed By Cum!", "Stripped Nude in the Slimepit", and "Fatal Surge of Tits". Robert Inhuman's vocals are amazing on this recording, with a screaming vocal range that can't be touched. Among the high pitched shrieks and screams, you also get slimey mucus sounds and moans, all of which bring this album together. The drums on this one are also especially great, listen to the begining of track 1, "Killed By Cum" and you'll see what I mean. And the guitar, it is so on, in that mentally insane way. These guys are demented, no doubt about it. And I hope they never, ever change. . . . from green record reviews |