Mania – Eros + Massacre reissue
Mania – Miserable Disposition reissue
Mania – If They Move... Kill Em reissue
The most tragic thing about Keith Brewer's untimely passing is that he never lived to collect his lifetime achievement award- on perversion alone. That and the simple fact that the last of the work so lovingly lustily bequeathed to the pervs of this world represents his very best. Perhaps, in availing said pervs this trio of Swedish reissues, indefinitely available at near cost, Tommy Carlsson too ought to qualify for some sort of consolation prize- a Lifetime Perv-vision Award or something (we'll work out the details later). Truly, the man is doing the Lord's work.
Eros + Massacre comes to us originally via Carl-ssan's inimitable Abisko, with cover art almost equal to title. The opening is...heavy. Low, ominous brood which quickly thickens into bludgered rumble- and then the thick metal bludgerings start hammering down. Some nasty feedback pierces into frame, the picture grows more distorted, slow oscillations rise in waves of hissy metallic gristle. Tensions grow pretty tight in the ensuing dis-calm, possibly sampled squeals and screams snaking through wheedling feedback as though impatient for the massacre to proceed in earnest. At long and brutal last, synthetic insectile buzzings join in the grimly lubricious bloodbathings and...suffice it say, the shit gets ugly. Fucking ugly. Nowhere near the later Mania, in other words, as concerns the more recently refined strains of delicate nuance (if such descriptors may even be permitted where the project is concerned) but possibly no the worse for that. Halfway through and almost harshnoise-ish knob slobbery obscures an inward cantanker of junk-scrap chain-rattle, physical junk-slam fits only rarely succeeding in breaking the tightness of their close-walled confines. Such moments are priceless, however, their rarified gasps in deadened airs finally strangulated in the unforgiving crush of flattened deathscrunch.
The flip side wastes no time in going full ugly. Heavy thud commences the deathscrunchings straight off, junk scraps almost completely buried in the thick of it. Deceptively so, however, as an occasionally widened stereo field allows the subtler refinements to wink through. Quite unexpectedly, straight-ahead stretches of distorto-belch barrel through the center, as though to up the harshenings but in fact to usher in a good and acoustic meeting of heavily manhandled metals. The hammerings-on-down start getting real ugly here, bass-heavy lows trembling with the impact, distorto walls blowing apart, and then the voice. The voice. No doubt nothing good to say so probably for the best that not a word can be made out, assuming anything more than agonized howls were in the offing. Now the tug and pull of alternately harsh-whitened wretchings and more grim-flavored metal-thunk. In the closing minutes a huge and doleful round of successive percussive thunks absolutely butchers the field, metals clobbering slobbering together, dungeon door slamming shut, locking in the lubricious proceedings to come.
Miserable Disposition more than lives up to its promise, but I'm not one to take chances. I spend the better part of the day watching re-runs of Happy Days, slamming bottles of Elk Brew, trying my damnedest to get in the mood. Finally muster the will to press play, and...greeted by surprisingly sharpened shrieking shear, knife-edges smoothly carving grimly grinning rictus into the grayed glistening face of dirge-tainted metallic sheen.
Now, I'm not necessarily going to call this purely harsh, or any more harsh than say Eros + Massacre. I mean, not to be harsh, but who knows what harsh really means anymore? Still. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that, in putting together this work for Harsh Head Rituals, Mania is playing for the home crowd. In the harsh and unrelenting screech of piercing metals repeatedly scouring into piercing metals, in the severely pitched feedback shriek, in the pain-wracked vocals railing in wracks of incoherent anguish, in the excruciating commitment to total earhole abuse, it is hard to call this anything but pure, harsh, noise.
By the halfway point there seems little resolve other than that by which to peel paint, the sheer screeching severity of it wallowing in the deliciously vicious viscosity. Then the acoustic junk metals come hammering back in cascades of roughly bashed-to-shit scrap-collapse, squealing feedback strains ensuring just that right measure of the goddamn nasty.
Flip the fucker over to: gorgeous cataclysm of acoustic metals bashing the living fuck out of one another. Amped humming spices up the latent low-end bilgeries, essential fed-back screechings carrying the bulk nastiness forward. Soon metal bashing resolves into heavy-handed, semi-regulated, percussive ker-thunk, breaking down and breaking off, making way for the much more structurally sound, industrial-strength, seethings of the follow-up. The follow-up floats slow cycling wobba-wobba against infrequent incursions of jagged scrap-shreddings. Cold, almost clinical acoustic elements murked in repetitive buzz-saw coruscation, whitened scathe-rasp progressively flattening along a mildly disheveled harsh curve.
Quite a lot of ground covered on this release so far, genuinely intrigued at what the final ditty will bring. Well first, just a bunch of mid-level curdle, threading the center of the occasional pealing strip of straight-laced feedback bleed. Then the mid-level curdle starts to agitate, tearing into rough patches of whitened belch. A sudden revelation as agitations roll into pained vocal rufflings, all the while the screechy pierce and bleed serving as guarantor of the expedited expiration of auricular faculties.
If They Move... Kill Em. Right you are, boss. Seems that someone unfortunately did move cause the results here are damn punishing. And just fucking DENSE. No screwing around even for a second, just dropped straight into the pure punishment, thick, rich, almost ridiculously overburdened and heavy. Stretched, too, to the edges of the audible spectrum, of the channel pan, flat flatulent chunks of bilge-crusted thundering bludger. Into this a fully filthed feed of carefully panned extremities, equal parts metallic, brittle, white-hot, scrunched tight, burnt to fucking shit. Filth, filth, and FILTH.
BT.HN. guests on track the second, but honestly after that first salvo you'd barely know it. Well, okay, now that the densities are sinking in, a crowded sense of forward non-movement, buried in even filthier burdenings of utter sludge. This is definitely of the capacity to challenge the capacities the low-end playback gear. Halfway through these eight minutes of perv-vection, scrap-metal scrinchings and wrenchings attempt to prize open the shut-tight airs, with more than modicum of success, the suffocating density somehow both weightier while seemingly hollowing out the core. A final give out of the insufferable pile-on and the pure metal scraps bash out a finely-hewn close.
The whole of the concluding side is given over to Hate On Hate. There is no fucking way this could not fucking destroy and, like, fuck. Destroyed. The opening intervals sound as though the protagonist were simply digging in the dirt, priming the destructive capacities. Then the huge and, yes, melodramatic slams of echoing metal distortions. A pull back and it's like only the bare distorted echoes vaguely beating against sludge-heap as the close-mic'd scrapes bite at the eyesocket. The descent to derelict dungeon hell is both steady and blurry-eyed, crud-slathered exertions piling onto crud-smothered oscillations, the barest echoed edges suggestive of so much gruesomely mangled meat. The brilliance here is in the very deliberate unfolding of the perversions, at all costs, snaring attentions in cumulative strangulated heaves of full-form saturated filth, the horrific gruesome spectacle of it simply too sick, and twisted, to ignore.
