Crawl of Time – Operation Black Widows (2020, Chondritic Sounds)
Been listening to this album quite a lot recently, and has come to the conclusion it occupies a treasured position within my canon of favorite records. Everything in it is so overwhelmingly dense and unnerving, in its composition and delivery that its energy seethes with repetitive mental pattern, induced psychosis, and emotional burden – all brought by living within a gang framework conditioning. From its description once can assure the album is heavily personal and based on genuine harrowing experiences. Notwithstanding its formulaic approach to textures one can easily find in most PE, this one deliver more than such; an apprehension of the absurdity of human experience, all finally packaged and reconstructed. Take the way La Machina alternates between dismal, atonal synth notes beneath recorded samples, up to a cascade of bright and burning noise. The pace is drawn out. Everything builds up in such a way one could conceive this one as being a harsh noise album. Then on the second track, vocals appear. A massively good outcome has been yielded from the effort of recording this music.
December Magic – Edifice (2023, Hospital Productions)
Another project of great Dominick. Both albums are really good so far, scrutinizing certain thematics in an aesthetically pleasant way. I don't know what it's about, but it certainly adds of the overall aura of mystery and danger. Pretty interesting album, consisting of dark ambient-oriented, minimalistic noise pieces, eerie vocals, and monochromatic instrumentation. Although focused on one particular event, the whole album seems like some sort of meditation on the nature of death and suffering. A Broken Spirit Won't Be Able to Learn Anything is beautiful. Reminds me of the question I posted on some thread about willing to listen to more music that sounded like Nicole 12, and this one does it quite well.
Climax Denial – Blackout Suite (2019, No rent)
Always exploring new territories, CD is without doubt one of the most important projects of modern American PE. One of the reasons to listen to the project stems from its compositional skill and versatile sound palette – everything is more than often greatly structured and releases tend to be heterogenous when taken as a whole. This album really did a great job on first employing field recording-ish sounds and ambient instrumentation, before breaking into a cacophony of walls of noise collapsing, into a more controlled song and sound structure.
Straight Panic - God is the Giver of the Gift (2019, No rent)
Didn't know about this band, and was surprised at the great outcome! Fixating low-frequencies crunchy as fuck, gorgeously built within a fine structure. Great vocal delivery, bringing fresh music to the material of last decade's PE. Reminds me of Death Squad, somehow. I like how the instrumentation progresses within the songs, spatially expanding during which section is better to. Also has great lyrics as I can hear it. Then with Death Drive the music shifts from traditional style PE into some fine abstract experimentation. Viral Load and Superinfection are truly outstanding and incredibly punishing songs.
