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Curse Of The Golden Vampire: Mass destruction
20/04/11 || Khlysty
In the mysterioso world that JK Broadrick’s and Kevin Martin’s various collaborations created, “Mass Destruction” is a bizarre and clearly demented stand-alone. So, to understand what the hell’s going on within this not-exactly-37-minutes-long slab of aggro soup, one has to retract a bit. So, once again, it’s history time.
During the early ‘90s, Broadrick and Martin started collaborating in a series of more and more heavy projects. Starting off with the already existing God, our intrepid heros went on to create Ice, Techno Animal plus about a trillion of once-offs. One these was a 1998 collaboration with Alec Empire, mastermind of Atari Teenage Riot and Digital Hardcore Records: under the moniker of Animal Empire, the creative trio put out a record of extremely aggro electronica, “Curse Of The Golden Vampire”, where Martin’s free jazz-dub influences collided with Broadrick’s grind-via-techno musings and Empire’s danceable hardcore/grind/electro/hip-hop mash-up signature sound.
The record is surprisingly listenable, considering how confrontational the material is. Obviously, this pretty much bugged Messieurs JKFlesh and Kmart, whose tendencies towards music that would offend the sensibilities of even the most hardened noisenik were already well established. So, they thought “why the fuck don’t we make a record that would be the equivalent of a drugged-out gang-rape between our sounds and ATR?” and promptly proceeded to do exactly that. Of this idea, out came “Mass Destruction”, a record that can easily ward the casual listener off music for quite a loooooong time.
On first listen, “Mass Destruction” sounds like a barely competent grind band trying to play jungle and the master tapes mixed by an ADDed James Plotkin, after being given a once-over by Masami Akita. What this means is that everything is fast, brutal, and overbearingly noisy, the “music” alternately slathered in digital bass sludge or old-video-game-sounds-treated-through-a-concrete-mixer ear-piercing treble. Over, under and beside the whole mess, Kmart’s –mostly electronically-treated- voice (and, occasionally, JKFlesh’s similarly abused one) screams, shouts, growls and howls incomprehensibly, most probably about things that upset him mightily: bad politics, imperialism, Dubya, oil wars, the fact that the drugs he acquired last night weren’t the proper ones… you know the drill.
If this sounds like the mother of all headaches, I can assure you that for 99% of the listeners it fucking is. This is club music for raves in Baghdad during heavy bombing, or for Grozny (most probably for all the time): it’s exceedingly aggressive, mightily atonal, and digitally treated in ways that I’m sure most legal systems would view as at least felonious. But, and here’s the rub, I think that this 1% left will find it exhilaratingly cathartic: the no-holds-barred mixing of extreme techno beats, of barely-tuned and heavily treated guitar riffs that equally reference Godflesh and classic Earache, of sieves of free jazz sax-strangling and of aggro-hardcore electro noise is the equivalent of diving into really cold water. A lot of people might suffer a heart attack, but, also, a lot will enjoy a huge rush of pure adrenalin.
Look, I won’t say that this is a reinventing of fire, nor is it an easy listen, nor is it “metal” per se. But, and I’ll say it again, for a small percentage of aficionados of true-blue extreme music, this is a fucking great listening experience, created by two incredibly talented musicians and unleashed to the unsuspecting crowds with the sole purpose of annihilation. So, if your tastes do not prohibit such beastly sounds, go for it without a second thought.
- Information
- Released: 2003
- Label: Ipecac Recordings
- Website: www.avalancheinc.co.uk/curse.html
- Band
- Justin K. Broadrick, Kevin Martin: curses, instruments, production
- Tracklist
- 01. Total Annihilation of Self
- 02. Parasite
- 03. Iron Ghetto Man Crusher
- 04. The Myth of Democracy
- 05. Murderer
- 06. United Snakes of America
- 07. Mind vs. Body
- 08. Vermin
- 09. Manslaughter
- 10. End Civilization
- 11. Sewer Life
- 12. State Rape
- 13. Insecticide
- 14. Oil Money
- 15. Random Act of Senseless Violence
