Incapacitants – Ostracized Enigmatic Conqueror
They came, they saw, they scorched your fucking head off. What they also did, is release some of their finest work in years. By years I mean, um, two. Two years. So yes, well, Incaps have recently been keeping the earholes occupied. Not counting a not insignificant number of split/collabs (including a potential winner with TNB), Their Royal Majesties have blessed the poor abused 'holes with three long players in as many years. Sufficient to induce in those unencumbered by grace or decorum a good and solid shitting of the pants.
So here we are, OEC on the grand ol' OEC. The comeback album, after 2018's iffy- if effin innerestin - Zouvneree. The best Incapacitants since Survival Of The Laziest. And, let's be clear. Survival Of The Laziest is no slouch. Ripped, raw, burnt, burly, bulging, bursting with surprisingly hefty balls of full-flavored thunder-crunch. All of it, or all the best of it, born in the studio – which, as I continue to maintain, is where all the real Incaps magic happens. I mean, Mikawa n pal could release live documents till the cows come home. Watch me dutifully suck it all up, enjoy it thoroughly, and then carefully file it away for future reference. But studio offerings like No Risk No Return. FLS Syndrome. Inverted Yield Curve. Full force dental-drillage of unsurpassed brutality, beauty, brutal beauty, excellence.
Here again, the studio delivers. "Paraponera Attack" is so good it's got me giggling like a schoolgirl. It's powerful. Real powerful. Raging with raw power. Electrifying hair raising 'hole razing power. If the history of sound were scripted otherwise, this would be Exhibit A in a field of auricular endeavor called power electronics. Better, power electric. Like hooking up to the grid and just mainlining 20,000 volts of raw energy. No sound of the sea here be. This is pure, raw energy. At the same time, it's very physical, very rockstar, as though the raging energy of guitar overlord in action could actually match, in sound, the frenzied gesticulation. What it isn't, is overloaded with blown out crunch-hefties a la SOTL. Though rich and full bodied, the pressures are mainly applied in the severely tweaked registers of high end, piercing, blister-scorch. In the dialect of the noiseperv, dacks be cacked this is HARSH. It progresses per traditional rockstar mode, in Mikawa-spastic fits, getting harsher and more frenzied as bolts of pure paraponera send the body into tortuously blissed convulsions, earholes utterly scorched and blistered but still the necessity to keep cranking it up Up UP. By the thirteenth minute we are coasting the singed ozones of the upper crustosphere, heavier thunder-bludgers starting to blot out the sky. A final siren to signal out, and we...we're fucking spent. Hell yeesh. Brief pause for requisite changing of the pants.
Up next, a bit of a brownout. A studio effort, but also the reason OEC will not dislodge SOTL as repping the best of the banker buds in twelve some years. On par with any number of pre-SOTL digitized ditties, smooth curving wheels of circular swish slosh silk-like from channel to channel, harsh vectors all but filtered out of the equation. There is, to some credit, a deceptive depth here. Ignore for a moment the sweeps and swoops surfing along the upper edges and sink into luxuriant clouds of cool, chromium, surge and glisten. Well, don't all shit yourselves at once.
Okay, let's see. That's two studio tracks consuming twenty-seven minutes. What next but forty-one solid minutes of live action. Emphasis on the action. One thing Incaps have mastered, over the course of the three most recent long players, Zouvrenee included, is the maxing out of the spectrum of possible auricular incident. There was a time when listeners (who I always thought were fucking deaf) would use words like "static" to describe the Incaps sound, live and otherwise. No longer. Even the fucking deaf (and apologies for my insensitivity, Incaps have all but guaranteed that my hearing will one day be blessed by that same, gloriously oblivious future of eternal "Ehh? Shpeak up shonny!"), yes, even the literally fucking deaf could not but feel the range of multidimensional vibration coursing through the airwaves. You say survival of the laziest I say soundtrack to the end of the world. An interesting exercise is to repeatedly jump to any random point via your digital playback device and never once will any one moment sound like another. You got them uppers, the lowers, the jizzers, the blowers; the screeching, the roaring, the splooging, the whoring; the crystalline, the smeared with vaseline; the pumping, the plowing, the sphinct-punching, the bowel-crunching. All that and more, your noise boy's a whore, don't care who know it, ain't fraid to show it. As my old man would shout, when in doubt whip it out. At moments sheer genius at others sheer wtf. At still others an unparsable convergence of two apparently opposed extremes. And, despite all that, despite the scorch-blistered excitement, the crunched-out delightment, despite the mastery of the many and marvelous multitudes of studied frequency overload, this is "just" another live Incaps, not even in the top tier thereof. Which, still can't stop me from shitting myself along the way.
Digest spew:
Incaps got the power, know how to fuckin use it. Power electronics from an alternate universe, where sound is consumed by mainlining raw power straight from the grid. Power electronics- better power electric. The raw energy emanating from the speakers will leave you locked in place, slackjawed, unblinking, vaguely scared, that this, all along, is what you want to receive. What you were born to receive. It's got that e-ner-gy, but also a rough n tumble physicality, brutality, that goes straight to gut, straight to pants. Power electronics unencumbered by the inconveniences of fact or history, hic, drunk on power, power electric. Good vibrations. All vibrations. Vibrate like a fucking eel. Deliver the goods. Feel me? No? Good. There are, by the way, two more tracks on this album, but who cares.
