Pissoir Rouge - Asphyxia Apotheose (Dunkelheit Produktionen, 2021)
Nice, varied harsh noise with some good vocal sections. I particularly liked the variety here - some wall noise sections, some pure vocal sections, some feedback-heavy sections, and some that have a combination of those things. It does feel like there was a lot of effort here to make individual tracks stand out - for instance, "Bullet-Doux"'s use of an oscillating pulse of noise that sounds almost like a motor, or "Roleplay" which starts out with a pretty generic porno sample (thankfully the only track on the album that does this) that then cuts in a nicely jarring way to some intense screamed vocals. Also a very good use of dynamics, with some quieter sections made to catch you off guard when the loud sections come in.
Cryptofascisme - Cinq Collines (Satatuhatta, 2023)
Another project of Rémi of Violent Shogun, this is a lengthy and hypnotic bit of droning industrial noise, with a thematic focus on the First Indochina War, fought by the Viet Minh against French occupation of Vietnam. I found the atmosphere of this album to be very foreboding, with kind of a push-pull dynamic between some more dread-inducing, synth-heavy oscillating drone sections and more intense, violent, noisy sections, which ebb and flow into one another. There's a palpable tension and sense of continuity that never lets up through the whole 60-minute runtime, which I think is really expertly done - this feels like one whole, complete piece rather than a collection of tracks, but still manages to have enough movement and textural shifts to not become stale. Overall liked this a lot, will probably try to seek out some of the earlier splits.
