HEAT SIGNATURE - Altered States Of Warfare CD (Found Remains, 2020)
The previous disc, Dehumanization In Progress, and the self-released tape from 2016 were superb, so my expectations were very high when I first put this on. I did fear, just a little, that this new disc would be just more of the same. I just didn't see where they could go from something as incredibly thick and chokingly dense as last years CD. Turns out the way forward was to make it less dense (duuuh), to carefully loosen the bolts and separate the cogs just a tiny bit. Et voila! Although Dehumanization... had several tracks as well, it flowed seamlessly like one long face-in-the-mud piece. On Altered States... the now more loose and rickety machinery gives each track more character of its own, the earthy explosive crunch more space to charge and clash with the mindwarping tape-stretch and the electronic squeal and screech, and more oxygen for the desperate howls to soar above the sonic trenches. And speaking of the sounds themselves, they're more finely chiselled this time, but with the surfaces kept frayed and rough. Another wise move is the treacherously "calm" piece Dosed Adrenal Glands halfway through the disc, offering a relative pause from the mayhem. In short; more depth, more drama.
I love how Luke and Brad have sortof jumped back in time with Heat Signature, to the mid 90's for a "fresh start", and started to stake out a path of their own from there, but not to lazily stick around but to move forward. And this is a big step further down that path. Easily their best, and that's not a small achievement given how incredible the previous album was.
