Trepaneringsritualen/Body Cargo – Split LP
TRP/Body Cargo split LP
TRP‘s songs play like b-sides from Perfection and Permanence. It contains two of his ambient works that harkens back to the Martyrium cassette but with the gloss of his success at setting up sparse synth sounds and mortar fire bass drums that peak with a quiet crescendo of ghoulish tact and another more defined track. Having no real idea exactly where “Unclæna Ghast” and “Gravfärd” begins, the listener is left with one continuous distant lawnmower clipping bag of a track that goes on for too long, unlike on Perfection… where the song structures were penned elegantly. Too long of a set up here. Also a tad lengthy, “Death Worship” is the winner here featuring a blanket of fuzz and lumbering crypt drums. The vocals here are very much in the style of Perfection…(do I sound like a broken record, yet?)…catchy, too. The totality of TRP‘s side is rich with mood, but nothing face crushing, but certainly better than the mess on the TRP side of the Deathstench split.
Body Cargo I’m largely unfamiliar with and their side of the split is not really prodding me to check out their other stuff. “Your God Is Watching” brings Macryonympha styled synth harshness decked out with tin can vocals meander here and there, offering some evil moments until it comes to a glottal stop after really going nowhere. Ready to be let down again, “E.S.D.” is more cavernous, heavy and dank with the right amount of fuzz and graveyard spun compression and swamp murk that eventually tatters and falls apart into a mix of howls and distortion rips . A nice set of sounds saves this side, too.
I was hoping this would have made my best of 2016 list, but it didn’t. Perhaps it is unfair to judge this split based on how awesome Perfection… was and it’s probably unfair to judge this split on Ekelund‘s contribution alone, but if I’m being honest, TRP alone brought me to this LP. It’s not a bad LP, but evidently non-essential with half of the staging being weak. I’m also not too thrilled with half of the art. The low-dpi record center label and also low-dpi, crappily placed skulls on the jacket really fuck up TRP‘s oft-used but trademark anti-church woodcut and symbol arrangements on the flip.
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