Various Artists – At The End of the Rope
At The End Of The Rope
With the opening track to this monolithic double cd compilation, At The End Of The Rope hushes the listener and cripples the mind. Projects ranging from the mighty Richard Ramirez to the desolate Omei, this compilation outlines the who’s who in the Noise and Dark Ambient genres. At The End Of The Rope is a study of the perverse sexual deviancies of fetishes and the utter bizarre nature of violence and sex. I have taken the time to listen to each track and lay this ingenious nightmare out step by damning step.
CD 1.
– Gruntsplatter is the first to paint a horrifying image of a decaying room stained with memories of torture, death, and the most outlandish perverted acts imagined. Dismantling waves of bass distortion droning over delicately placed layers of extremely high pitch noise, low end fluttering fades in and out while most innocently a flute flirts with the listener. “The Acidic Blood” is a dire soul trapped within the pulsating throbs of low end textures and collapsing dark atmospheres. In “The Acidic Blood” multiple entities roam here within the astonishing darkness.
– Steel Hook Prostheses follows suit with “Violent Struggle Beneath The Pillow”. An eerie dark “ah” falls in a smothering drone as what seems to be a steam piston agingly trying to incite life. Heavy distorted guitar chugs anomalously like a predator, while a distorted venomous vocal attack pleads in shock to the heinous events that are occurring right before the scrambling form lays lifeless and the fantasy is fulfilled.
– Viodre’s “Feeding Breath” wastes no time ingesting a vile mixture of ghostly waves of white noise moving from side to side in a intoxicating blanket of static and amplifier abuse. Out of nowhere a tribal beat takes over with the raking of knives and a corroding static voice mellowly speaks of atrocities of the mind. When all quiets down, just then a blasting tunnel of defeating noise maliciously steals one’s breath and leaves you there to rot.
– Prurient is next with “Pacific Highway South”. This statement of horror and violence cuts deep inside the soul. A vibrating channel of static and sharp noise insectically swarms like black flies in the background as a screaming female voice persistently begs for help. Echoing off in the abstract distance the shrieking vocals are brothered by clotted shots of effect laden bass. All ending in a glistening moment of truth.
– Whorebutcher’s claustrophobic and intensely hypnotic “It’s Your Only Choice” maliciously forms from out of the darkest of shadows. A somewhat catchy loop turns the gears of depleting insanity all the while a grave-ish array of pulsating high frequencies lacerate the air. A deformed soot layered transmission is sprawled out over the electric clambering noise and ending in a decaying fleet of hope.
– Mania enters with “Gasper”. A feverish wall of white noise and power electronics. There’s not much to this track but just that. There are moments of bassy distortion, warped out keyboards but most of Gasper is nothing more than murderous brutality.
– Control makes its presence known with “To Die For”. A decomposing composition of distorted drones mixing with spaced out keyboards and evaporating pulsations. There is so much going on in “To Die For” it comes across almost alien. The rumbling of furnaces, static bassy hums, puncturing high pitched narrating and the hellish dragging sound all of this and much more shapes this to be one of the more stand alone tracks on this compilation.
– Moribund takes on the perversion of power and control in “My Power”. Fading in is a guitar throbbing and isolated. Following is a taunting and most frightening voice heavily warped out and slowed to a creeping pace. No sooner does the voice sinisterly leave as a dispiriting assault of harsh noise beat the senses into submission.
– Nicole 12’s “Cock and Rope” is a definitive track on this compilation. An English gentleman narrates about children and demoralized images of abuse. And once the vivid and forceful direction is unleashed by the narration, hypnotic keyboards teasingly open the doors to the perverted images waiting inside. Gagging, moaning and coughing female voices echo in the backdrop as a gurgling wavy voice speaks of horrors of the flesh.
– Deathpile brings its brand of rape, kidnaping, and murder with “Questions for Christina”. A story of the obsession with a 6th grade girl, ending in sexual violence and death. Layers upon layers of low end rumblings, pulsating feedback and textures of scathing dissonance upholds the attention of the listener and casts a blanket of paranoia down upon one’s mind.
– Cleanse steps up and lets loose with its track “Throat”. A straight to the point approach with “Throat”, much like Mania did with “Gasper”, Cleanse does here. Descending like a hammer, the white noise washes over the mind and balances on the point of oblivion. Erratic attacks of power electronics, quivering static signals cutting in and out as sweeps of harsh feedback drifts away calm and menacing.
– Immaculate:Grotesque takes the same approach that both Mania and Cleanse did. With “Attrition” Immaculate:Grotesque walks that fine line of Power Electronics and Noise to create a well defined piece of work. Asphyxiating noise interfacing climatically together in a twisting tempest of spasm induced static and unstable walls of resound. Blast furnace rumblings, coarse decaying detonations of high pitch frequencies all adding up to a grave ending covered in feedback.
– Slogun’s “Maybe Just Maybe” is a very unusual track. A calamity of looping static injected broadcasts and layered with a low end drone lurking in the storm of vocal abuse. There’s not much to “Maybe Just Maybe”, but none the less still a fine track indeed.
– TEF brings nothing but despair, viciousness, and all out war. “Taut Ejaculatory Fibres” is a warzone if you will. Machine gun fast noise pulsations, spaced out phaser keyboards and a arsenal of power electronics. Guitar feedback howling at times over a ocean of solid gnawing noise. Metallic harsh cacophony resonating through out “Taut Ejaculatory Fibres” blisters the eardrums and destroys to the very end.
– Hentai begins “Harvey M. Glattman Suite” with locomotive rthymatics, steel on steel screeching, and industrial corrosion. Textures transfixed calculatingly undermining volume shifting white noise. A diverse lashing of power electronics, as the hate filled thundering from what seems to be huge blasts from the death fires. Hellfire in the purest form.
– Clew Of Theseus births its track “Gag Orde”. “Not so cheery anymore, is it?” the woman states before being saturated in multi layered battery. Heaving frequencies shivering into warlike catastrophes of noise and potent screams of industrial decimation. Intrusive squawks of vibrating textures mixing well with static induced wah’s and screeches.
– Lefthandeddecision rounds out the first cd with a ravaging plan of attack with “Innocence”. This clamoring opus conjures an armory of hate filled industrial deformities with monumental waves of throbbing noise. Desolate stereo fields and swiftly shifting uncontrollable white noise. Tidal waves of dark electronic noise washes over as an insectic alienating voice trembles in the for front. Innocence is left raped and decaying in a very violent end.
CD 2.
– Atrax Morgue has always been hit or miss with me. I’ve never really placed any interest in this project though with “Narcosi da Cluror di Etile” I must say that I might find the time. Italy’s Atrax Morgue erotically exposes wickedly demented vocal work as minimal power electronics repetitively impales itself deep into the mind. Even the low volume feedback and the amplifier humming just gives a texture of perverseness to “Narcosi da Cluror di Etile.”
– Omei is by far one of my most favorite Noise/Dark Ambient projects. And with that being said, “Symphony For Chair And Rope” is the track just to embellish deeper into why I love Omei. A static field hissing and buzzing mixed with a soundscape drift that just lulls profoundly internal. The haunting spectral keyboards and samples give “Symphony For Chair And Rope” that dismal alone feeling. As the dark ominous drift carries along distance random sounds from horns echo in the blackness to a lost voice covered in textures and relay effects beckon in the foreground as a build of volume and movement suddenly is showered with high end buzzing that fades back into the dark ambient drift. Bravo.
– Concrete Violin comes forth with “Ligottism”. With a very generator like repetition to Ligottism there isn’t much else to the track itself. Hypnotically sound with rapid pulsating engine frequencies lifeless firings of piston after piston ritualistically. While a shallow layer of high end feedback and harsh noise hold this track into place. The volume goes to a crushing level toward the end, peaking only to fall into a bizarre and offbeat conclusion leaving you a bit unfulfilled.
– Eeyow Karoom’s From “The Sky And Radiating” proceeds with style and rich almost breakbeat loops. In the same hypnotic loop like state as Concrete Violin, Eeyow Karoom utilizes the pulsating bass throbs in a heartbeat rthymatic trance as a twisted decaying breathing respirator releases distorted shots of air. Feedback whistles into an echoing spacescape all the while sounds of jet streams cascade in the distance. Rising up from out of the bedlam, a generator loop mechanically fades out.
– Dodsdomd marches forth in “Guts Around My Throat”. An erratic static induced marching rhythm, loops over radio atmospherics cackling with feedback, overlapping textures and amplifier hisses. Everything gets lost in a black hole of white noise, high end wind tunnel distortion rotating into a fazed out static that fades quietly away.
– Redrot lurks out from the rampart with “Fellated By Death’s Mouth”. This throbbing mixture of low end bass loops and apparitional feedback reverberating as hellish vocals cry up from the pits. Shrieking guitars, unearthly vociferations and an oppressing machine churning into a distorted screaming entity.
– Propergol’s “SSM (Slow Sexy Motion)” hits the mark with this Death Industrial masterpiece. Shades of Megaptera creep up from the depths of “SSM”. The sampling of both male and female voices. Echoing ever so hauntingly as waves of static rush over the buzzing and low end drone that sways back and forth. Feedback merges in and out. Alien soundscape essences inner twine down what seems like an endless tunnel. As the dirge of Propergol climbs to a staggering close the insectic buzzing fades out and the last words are spoken.
– Inhalant drops the chair out from underneath “Dead and Hanging”. Ripping every ounce of breath out from the lungs with the first blast from the crematory Inhalant rushes the skull with abrasive vocal battery, atmospherics, mechanical textures and wind tunnel rumblings. Arousing the deviling loops and sci-fi like sound effects into a steady relationship of death and eroticism.
– Priest In Shit is a side project of the mighty Richard Ramirez, and I for one like this project quite a bit. “Lust” is a very straight forward approach. Not wavering too much from the harsh noise elements that we’re use to hearing from Mr. Ramirez, we find a darker undertone to Lust. With the lush guitar feedback relay and the driving keyboard loop harvests the darker experience. The odd effects that are on the voice sounds like it’s almost collapsing down on itself. Bizarre elephant/alien like appears to roar up from the backdrop. The aesthetic faculties that we tend to find in projects by Mr. Ramirez are now being explored in a different light.
– Navicon Torture Technologies’ “What Some Call Obsession, I Call Devotion” is very perversive with the constant looping of young girls talking, crying, and pleading. Toppling the track is a aggressive corroding distorted low end drift. Minimal noise, more over with the sampling and imbedding baleful drone. There’s not much to “What Some Call Obsession, I Call Devotion”. It’s over whelming with the loud static buzzing and the repetitive whimpering of a young girl. Don’t get me wrong I like this track. But sometimes the underbelly of perversion can be a very ugly thing, and projects like Navicon Torture Technologies hit the nail right on the head.
– Richard Ramirez’s untitled track is back to the basics if you will. The harsh noise, power electronics, and minimal stance on the boundaries of feedback and distortion layered textures. Mr. Ramirez has never let me down on the releases that I have been fortunate enough to find. And I for one will continue to buy the releases. Untitled is pretty much fast power electronics. Blasts of feedback, shattering high pitch distortion and a hell of a lot of effects.
– Stegm’s “Puckering Gills” has a less is more approach to it. The rhythmatic loops that heavily pulsate through out the track makes “Puckering Gills” catchy at points and mesmerizing. The loops change in repetition, rhythm, and tempo. Shifting from a straight driving loop into an erratic convulsing loop, Stegm does nothing to disappoint. “Puckering Gills” is less static white noise, and more lumbering in the realm of samples and loops.
– Sickness ends “At The End Of The Rope” with “Absolution”. A violent stream of power electronics, harsh white noise and industrialized mercurial changes. All lines have been depleted. Deafening frequencies outburst over static overtones. Sickness’ mental derailment leaves a permanent mark of perverse nightmares and anything but the meaning to the said track.
At The End Of The Rope is a double cd release of only 1,000. This masterpiece clocks in at two hours, twenty three minutes and sixteen seconds. (That’s both cd’s times added together) And is completely worth every penny you spend. Packaged in a double cd plastic jewel case and comes with a silkscreen cover art. – K
CHONDRITIC SOUND
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