Various Artists – Revelation
Powernoise needs to die. Yes, it was interesting for a second and we all listened to it but now it’s past time for it to disappear into oblivion. For those of you unfamiliar with powernoise, here’s an easy way to imagine it: you overload your washing machine with laundry and it makes that rhythmic THUMPTHUMPTHUMP sound. Add some more oontz to it and voila! Powernoise. Occasionally there are some background screeches and random movie samples, but essentially you’ve got the idea. It’s EBM for the ‘extreme’ scene. That said, the majority of this compilation is powernoise so, naturally, I’m unimpressed. This is the first release for the excellently-named Bugs Crawling Out of People label. However, if this is the direction the label’s taking, it’s a waste of a good name. Some of the tracks here are worthwhile: Casual Coincidence’s “Merboso” is a genuinely creepy ambient soundscape, bETON bARRAGE combines ambient and noise to an unnerving end in “Devoured by Flies”, and Nitrous Flesh turns in two good tracks – “The Return of the Dark Angel” parts 1 and 2, the first of which is ambient and the second is noise/drone. Cold Flesh Colony and Asphalt Leash both bring some decent standard wall-o-noise barrages. The rest of the disc is powernoise. I knew three of the bands from when I listened to that kind of thing (Pneumatic Detach, Iszoloscope, and Scrap.edx) and I was curious to see how they’d evolved. They hadn’t. It’d been (roughly) five years since I’d heard them and it’s exactly the same. I guess there’s something to be said for sticking to your guns, but when that means releasing the same derivative tripe for half a decade, I suggest just sticking ’em. But hell, if you’re one of the powernoise crowd, keep up with this label. It seems to be right up your alley. -Christine Lett
BUGS CRAWLING OUT OF PEOPLE
Worm Gear 