V/A – Bullshit Detector 2008 CDR
Audio Immolation Industries
Now THIS is a BAD ASS noise comp!!! First of all, fucking awesome idea. Bullshit Detector offers noise remixes and re-interpretations of anarcho-punk, hardcore, and metal songs. With many of the people on the punk/hardcore/metal end of the “extreme music” spectrum doubting the power of noise/industrial let them doubt no more and look no further then Bullshit Detector 2008.
There’s not one track on this compilation I dislike. Every artist delivers their best here with an absolutely consistent lineup. Concrete Violin offers a great …

+Dog+ – Spiritual Awakening CDR
Love Earth
Expectations are a funny thing, they can really affect how I end up feeling about something. The god-awful design on Spiritual Awakening really sets the bar very low and got me expecting the absolute worst from this full length. Of course, looks can be deceiving, and a good musician does not always a good graphic designer make. Am I still making any sense here? Well, Spiritual Awakening is about an hour of what I can only describe as “mid-paced noise”. The material presented here is …

Climax Denial – The Absolute Bottom C45
Husk
Climax Denial’s The Absolute Bottom makes for some great late-night listening. And, as I’m finding out now it doesn’t have to only be enjoyed at extremely loud volumes. The tape is decent quality, the mixing and production are lo-fi but extremely full and powerful right in all the places it needs to be. With two tracks on side A and 4 on side B it’s well paced and varied enough to provide interest for many repeated listens.
The opener “What I’ve Seen” is so simple …

Katchmare – Lotus Village Plan 3xCDR
Scissor Death
Oh god, this was a tough one. 3 fucking discs of ultra-minimal drone I had to sit through, but I did it, the whole goddamn thing. I dunno, I just don’t have the patience for this kind of stuff. So quiet and slow moving that you are actually focused on the volume of the “tape hiss” which I’m sure isn’t actually tape hiss, maybe just a bed of white noise? But yes, it’s treated as a layer here, and fades in and out at …

Locrian – Greyfield Shrines LP
Diophantine Discs
Greyfield Shrines is a record that is successful on at least a few levels. The first is that it’s just a damn solid release, and the second is that it’s actual guitar drone that I like. I really appreciate when artists can break my jaded opinions and Locrian has done just that. It was only about 5 minutes into the one track – that takes up both sides of this LP – that I starting thinking about how Locrian sounds much like a darker Emeralds …

Lid Emba & Bobcrane – We Substitute Radiance CD
Stickfigure
Here are two new-to-me artists delivering a collaboration of experimental guitar driven electronica in a very colorful digipak. The art kind of looks like the fruit section at the supermarket. Definitely an eyebrow raised when I first peeped this shit and I can say right off the bat this isn’t my thing.
The weird sounds and experimental aspect of We Substitute Radiance is pretty neat. “Ear candy” type sounds glistening, squiggling, chirping along in every track. The electronica aspects are a bit weaker, …

Steel Hook Prostheses – Atrocitizer CD
Malignant
Ah yes, the SHP boys are back with this full length now coming in from the Malignant front. If you’ve ever heard SHP before you know you can expect some top-quality industrial noise/power electronics with perhaps a bit of an atmospheric touch. The latter of which is much more apparent over the almost 50 minutes that Atrocitizer spans.
If you took away the scathing vocal attacks – which are often the loudest element in the mix when they appear – and merely focused on the sounds, …

Fossils – Waterboarding CDR
Unverified
I stopped asking why a while ago. Probably after about a year of doing reviews, I figured out it’s better just not to ask why, but to outright state why not. Asking why is just an exercise in futility at best, at worst it’s a colossal waste of time energy and frustration.
Waterboarding is a badly packaged CDR that features an even worse recording of even worse improvised sounds. Experimental music without the experimentation. Fuckery without the “FUCK”. The recording on this is barely as loud as the …

D/A A/D – This is My Hell CDR
Snip Snip
This is my first exposure to D/A A/D and it’s a bit of a surprise. Don’t know why, but I was expecting some harsh noise. This is My Hell is instead 3 longish tracks clocking in around 40 minutes of slow modular synthesizer compositions. It’s pretty minimalist and sounds like it’s half way in between Pulse Emitter and Klinikal Skum.
The first track doesn’t really do it for me. I find the sounds run-of-the-mill with the evolution of the track to be so-so. …

Caustic Castle – Makepiece 3″CDR
SMTG Limited
Ah, good ‘ol Caustic Castle. Caustic Castle is Kenneth Yates, one half of the experimental unit Harm Stryker. For Makepiece he is joined by the meandering saxophone stylings of Clifford Schwing. Makepiece is one longish track clocking in around 18 minutes which features barrages of high pitched squeals, mid ranged squiggles, feedback, organs, and even a little bit of melody here and there.
The piece starts off at it’s most caustic with harsh high-register sounds of the sax bleeting away while joined by feedback and organ …