Pages

Aug 10, 2013

PERISH (2013)


I love a good scream and it's a shame that in becoming a sort of staple of heavy music, it's so often reduced to something mechanical, obligatory, or matter-of-fact. Like the distorted guitar, it's frequently used without reflection, missing its potential for the simple empathetic transmission of feels from musician to listener. This year two albums (at least) have re-examined this potential (direct-expression-of-human-suffering-or-feeling)- Master, We Perish and Abandon, returning the scream to something startling, physical, and abstract- my first holy fuck that's a scream moment being the first time I heard Milk It having bought In Utero 'cause it was cheaper, and the nonsense line "doll steak, test meat" meaning infinitely more than any of the singer's sung poetics. On Master, We Perish I'm reminded of the guy singing for Weakling, shrieking in agony trying make his way out of the band's whirlwind of brootal noise. It's importantly human as the instruments shift and change- a tribal drum could turn into a jackhammer, and other voices seem disembodied- whether original or sampled, they become part of Master, We Perish's noisy collage. Vocals more typical of the slightly misleading 'sludge' tag might make it sound entirely like music in a blender, but the ones they've gone for seem to react to the collage's themes of devotion and ritual suicide (rather than say glamorizing or condoning these things), giving everything a real human consequence. The EP is a triumph of efficiency, the band do just about everything they need to in only three songs and each works for its own specific reasons. Also I really like this (is it real?):



bluecollar / insound / mega

No comments:

Post a Comment