See bottom of this post for digest commentary.Kjostad – Extinctionist
Kjostad – Red Iron KnifeAfter the
Dirge returns the
Exctinctionist, solemnly escorting grim-faced
Environment Electronics to their logical conclusion. And don't pretend for a moment you didn't see it coming. At the very least you would have to have heard. Reference first the broadened range of material uncovered deep in the deceptively tranquil recesses of
Glacial Lake. Reference the better part of the more recent work, in fact, the ever-expanding material explorations of texture, color, mood. Reference the cavernous dirge-like groans of
baited cave bears still trapped in the damn cave; the savage threshing of
crack-splitting wedgies jammed hard and smarting deep into well-dug channel pan; the seething sizzling accumulations of
median ice on a bit of the ol' in-out. Reference, maybe, a choice shade of
vermilion you twenty LUCKY FUCKS and no I ain't jealous. Not in the FUCKING least. And would you get a load of the metals on this one: clearly defined hefty boy torsions wrenching clanking stumbling through sedate field recordist pastorals, equal parts ripped-to-shit and circumspect in the delicate extrusions of nuanced introspection, masses of blown-out frequency overbilge strangely becalmed, extinguished, laid to rest in the violent twisting stillness of thatched undergrowth.
Dirge is the first direct point of reference in opener
Vigil. Notwithstanding the parallel narrative arc, the now almost patented Kjostad inaugural deep-dive into forested naturist environs,
Keen-sounding loon-y tunes setting off stuttered buzz of chopped cables erratically jacked into malfunctioning socket, as though male and female lead were trying to imitate the mating warble of nocturnal lake birds. Much unlike the Dirge-like predecessor, the vigilant sweep of each erratic edge etches white-hot at its terminus, as though itching to let rip, jittery agitations all but ensuring of nerve-jangling disquiet. A perfect intro, in other words, leaving earholes sharpened and perky, tensions good and upped, ready for anything.
And damned if the Extinctionist doesn't let rip with everything on hand- at least, everything in the way of crude hunks of iron bashing into crude hunks of iron. Dirge-crusted
Elegy-ac full metal racket of heavy duty junk-scrap cascades in carefully channeled full spectrum avalanche deep in the temple of doom. Every time I hear this track I picture the cover art for
Red Iron Knife, but I'm probably getting ahead of myself. I mean, mining for ore would not be considered the safest of vocations at the best of times, leave alone in the turn of the century heyday of the likes of Hiram Bingham. Here the life-threatening dangers are brought gloriously to er life, vivenzational loops and layers gathering in mighty cacophonies of rusty-eyed red. Blood, guts, glory! Heroic larger-than-life-slash-crushing-of-life sacrifices saturate the fullest bodies of the channel pan to achieve possibly the most purely industrial cut from the project yet. Although, being that it is Kjostad helming the steely slammerings-on-down, none of it's getting away without a rightly
Riven dash of raspy, ascerbic, burn to roughen up the edges.
In track 3 the Extinctionist at last escapes, if temporarily, the long shadow of Dirge.
Fort Kjostad could be even more industrial strength than the previous track, particularly in its core developmental capacities. The heavy duty metals are reprised, but trimmed back to play a much more dominant, percussive, role, heavy-handed slams looping at regularly echoed intervals over jarringly sunny spots of twittery bird chirp. Meanwhile a much colder dirge-like drizzle of grayed amp-hum slowly ascends, soon overwhelming the percussives and bringing with it a sharpened sweep of wider-panned scraping and banging, flits of bird twitter stealing across wobbly electronic oscillations. Where the ascerbic seethe was in the second track more a bit of spice for the edges, this is all edge, the seething salivations washing in wet weaves to borderline psychedelic peak before ruptured, wrinkled, grit kernels completely kill the mood.
Scavengers reclaims the sound recordist tendencies of the album opener, so too the tensions methodically built in the cross-hatched pitches of whitened static-chisel and amplified freezer-burn. First the background amplifications of forest, wind, birds, insects flow together in richly woven white-noise aspiration, then the irregular electronic infiltrations, hums, buzzes, white-hot stutters, start to fray the nerves. In the structural unfolding it almost feels like the commencement of Extinctionist Part Deux, white-hot stutters agitating with increasing desperation, gouging, tearing, almost completely obscuring the ambient backdrop, going out with a final extended wash of purest white.
Iron Edge posits seemingly backmasked metal scraps edging in cyclical scrapes against bitter distortions of crinkled dirt-mound trowel. Incoming airs of ghosted whine signal a more robust channeling of repetitive machine-like murmur and then a looped series of percussive distorto-rips, possibly birthed in overdriven junk-scrap, starts to blast proceedings into brutally frazzled bits, rhythmical iron-edged penetrations mercilessly pounding 'hole, achieving in their overloaded capacities a full-flavored harsh inclination. The closing minute is given over to extended buzzing drawl, smooth rolling loll proffering 'hole-salving massage, a brief respite before the final extinction.
Extinctionist, closing ditty and title track, does what it say on the tin. Massed concentrations of ripped-raw frequency overload, not unreminiscent of Dirge closer
Extinguish, extinguish everything in their path. There could well be piles of scrap-metal in there, but all of it is dialed up way past eleven, distorting the field completely. Comes in hard, the invasive thrust of white-edged stab jerking it out with thick belchings of strangulated crunch, driving forward in looped, iron-edged, orchestrations of densely packed earhole extinguishment. At about one minute forty the jets open, filling out the stereophonic scope, massed explosions of incendiarist flatulence breaking the wind with all consuming force and damage. Just when things are about ready to spin out of control, a good hard yank on the reins, white-edged Iron Edge stabs fighting the bitterly distorted return of crinkled dirt-mound trowel. On the home stretch and a furious drive for oblivion, nothing subtle here, straight for the kill, raging white-sheeted all-boxes-tickled scorched earth policy obligingly satisfying the extincionist agenda.
Red Iron Knife would fairly beg for release on a label like White Centipede Noise- in lieu of, say, Militant Walls- and it seems that prayers were answered.
Dedicated to the Iron Range, says the label blurb,
cutting into the torso of the mountain...for fans of DEAD BODY LOVE. Okay I get all that, but I'd say there's more to it in these (red iron) works. If DBL were on in the offing, it would be less in rapture to
Low-Fi Power Carnage and more along the introspective dedications of
Hum Of The Druid's
Lens On Necrosis, so too perhaps per the similarly invested druidic investigation of
Texture in Professor McKinlay's seminal Lake Shark Harsh Noise #1. Let's throw in the
self-titled HOtD on Abisko, just for fun. Texture, amiright?
I suppose I oughtn't get carried away
too too much. There are subtleties- plenty -constant movement, shift, change. Plenty of opportunity to explore, in a studied and detached professorial bemusement, the myriad fissures, fractures, erosions, the richly mined lines cut deep into the torso of the mountain. Strip mine the bilge-ious piles of asphyxiated scrunch-heap and up peak the clear contours of rusted red iron ores. Apply to the volume knob an incremental torque and note in the bouquet of variegated ozones the nuanced textural refinements. But. This is still as regressive and brutally overdriven as the good professor ordered, redzoned thundering densities huge and all-consuming, bigly hefty boys delivering
Metal Induced Orgasms of purest blown-out crunch, DBLesque ferric saturations no self-respecting Druid would touch with a ten-foot staff.
The opening measure of
Open Pit Bodies does not, initially give away the game. Heavy steady gouge of caustic percussive gristle, blackened crusts of filthed distortion badgering the rough-hewn iron edges with a looped regularity which would not be out of place among the heftier leavings of, say,
Extinctionist. At this still-early stage cracks of daylight illuminate breaks of open-aired amp hiss, as though to give the internal organs time to acclimate. But before long the organs realize that the filth isn't going anywhere, and in fact as proceeds the descent into increasingly dense, suffocating pressures, it's only going to get filthier, murkier, heavier. By about the fourth minute, any sense of gouging or hammering has completely fused with the outlying extremities, the full stereophonic spectrum of possibility carved from the deepest bass, the whole-brained crush of it barreling forward with little restraint or relent.
At seven or so minutes a brief break-down initiates a much more aggressive savaging on in, burnt-to-shit scrap accumulations reaming the filth-walls, rents in fabric suggestive of having penetrated an entirely new hollow. If the sound weren't so huge and burly one might be forgiven in perceiving a certain subsurface
spastic inclination, the multiform textural interrogations heaving with brute, dynamic, pressure. At about the fourteenth minute a sudden contraction into strangulated lines of militant purity, about the only deferral on this album to borderline academic line cutting. Soon, however, a new passage is blown open, hollowing out a much wider aperture, the acoustic dimensions revealing sharp, chafing piles of junk-on-junk cantanker that might almost be inclined to reverberate in the gloom were the field not so plainly suffocating.
The end run carries on for a good seven minutes. The field narrows and scrap textures condense to achieve an almost classically harsh, abrasive, grinding consistency. At a few key junctures, muted filtrations of pure low-end completely muffle proceedings. Just to fuck with you. But also to avail the poor abused 'holes opportunity to approach each successive exercise in abrasive grinding-down with a somewhat freshened- or wtf'd -perspective. This is sorely needed. Where before a sense of forward movement propelled attentions ass-first through high-pressured sphinct-ruptures of full spectrum textural blowout, now a tightly regulated grinding threatens to break the will for good. With each renewed attack, however, renewed expectation of break
through. And in the closing minute, in the concentrated scrape of metal abrading metal, in the white-flecked scathe of clambering ascent, in the sheering drive through the granite torso, at last: break-
End.
Deerblood Paleface starts much like the first track, rugged rusty-edged scraps gouging away at a largely impermeable bedrock. This time the bedrock is much heavier in the rumbling low-end, as though perspective were already well sunk into the torso of the mountain. The gougings, too, are a fair measure more aggressive, abrasive frictions practically screeching at the surface, airs temporarily cleared to allow the razor-sharpened definition to gleam in the gloom. At around four minutes the very slightest rumble-pause and then the onslaught: thunderous avalanche of full-scale cacophonous blurrrrrrrrt, what one might in the business call a quintessential
FUCK YEAH moment. Mounds upon mounds of Le Shit, piled higher and deeper, dense pressures pushing to crowd out all light, all air, never quite at the expense of the ever-the-more-ferocious iron-clad gouge-action keeping it tight.
Nevertheless, the competition, here, is fierce. At one moment it sounds as though someone has tipped a gargantuan mine cart over, emptying its contents all over some sorry bastards head. At others it sounds like the cart is screeching around snaking corners, coming of the rails, slamming into the crud-walls. And all while that insistent, biting, gouge, repeatedly rips into the fractured, crumbling, overblurt. But all- all of it- utterly buried, smothered, in massed filth-textures of tar-blackened bilge. Chances of anyone making it out alive appear exceedingly slim. But hey, all in a day's work.
At seven minutes or so, the first attempted condensation into militant reductionism, but bristling still along a spine fairly bursting with raw energy. As if to reinforce the point, a brief slatherly slash of fiery scorch rips through the scene, walls immediately closing upon its exit, but sufficient to aggravate the nervous energies defining each opportune moment. Once again more than hint, in the dynamic textural interrogations, of subsurface
spastic inclination. The protagonist keeps losing grip of that damn knife
whoops! slashing twisted patterns through the weighty crunch-loads
er sorry about that, Jack, and no this is definitely not the place for slipshoddedness. Twelve minutes deep and the slashings start to get just that mite tad out of hand, and frankly
Jack it's hard to believe this is not as intended. The final decisive slash burns white-hot, sheering dead center with palpably pointed precision, driving in its wake a more robust tangle of competing elements, the attentions reaching that decisive point of no return, simultaneously compelled to dive deep and...to just let Le Shit runneth over, leave the proverbial paleface deer carcasses fall where they may.
A regrouping on the twentieth minute, as protective bubbles of bulging bass compress perspective for a merciful twenty count. Then, ever so engagingly, the bubble dissolves and all hell flushes in, surging currents carrying hordes of iron-tipped particles ripping through wide-open rumble pits, blown-out bludgeoning crunch waves hammering down upon the churning instability. A final, classically minded, break for char-blistered scorchout, reaching for that paleface-whitened flat-line, eyes roll back,
flat-line.
Digest spew:The
Extinctionist comes full circle, as he ought, a culmination or crystallization of the vision to date. There's harsh noise in there, but also a shitload of otherwise, leveraging an ever-expanding material exploration of texture, color, mood. Much in evidence of the increasingly disposed propensity for heavy duty metalwork, the clearly defined hefty boy torsions wrenching clanking stumbling through sedate field recordist pastorals, deep in forested environs, equal parts ripped-to-shit and circumspect in the delicate extrusions of nuanced introspection, masses of blown-out frequency overbilge strangely becalmed, extinguished, laid to rest in the violent twisting stillness of thatched undergrowth. Also noteworthy, the developmental sense of structure, both in the narrative arc of the album and in the elaboration of each individual cut, the subtle build of tensions ever itching to let rip, jittery agitations all but ensuring of nerve-jangling disquiet.
Red Iron Knife cuts deep into the torso of the mountain, delivering DBLesque Metal Induced Orgasms of purest blown-out crunch. There are subtleties galore, constant movement, shift, change. Plenty of opportunity to explore the myriad fissures, fractures, erosions. Strip mine the bilge-inous piles of asphyxiated scrunch and up peak the clear contours of rusted red iron ores. Apply to the volume knob the requisite torque and note in the bouquet of variegated ozones the nuanced textural refinements. But. This shit's overdriven as fuck. Redzoned thundering densities, huge and all-consuming, drive mercilessly brutal saturations of the purest, blackest, filth. Dip, now, below the surface and wallow among the multiform textural interrogations, heaving and hauling with brute, dynamic, pressure. The quintessential
FUCK YEAH! moment, drawn out for forty-eight straight minutes of Dead Body LUST.
