Vehement Caress – Flaying the Pyre C45

Apicult Recordings

Vehement Caress is a dark electronics crossover act exploring the areas of dark ambient, death industrial, drone, noise, and power electronics. It is the work of Lex Russo who is native to the Boston area and seems quite content in keeping his influence local. However, his work is quite effective and although kept in very limited quantities he has toured several times up and down the east coast.

To kick things off with the release the packaging is awesome, it’s all printed on transparency so the graphics have a really unique look about them. In addition there is a lot of interesting poetry added as well, things like: “A silver tongue lashed upon blind believers.”. I am really digging the title of the album and song names as well so all of this puts me in an excellent mood and accurately prepares me for the sound.

Both sides feature 3 different tracks with side A commencing on a harsh note. The Gaping Maw of Insincerity is a barrage of crunchy noise textures always changing so quickly that it becomes wall noise after a few minutes. It’s a good start but when the dark drones of And in that Moment of Insatiable Desperation, He Wept kicks in it’s a welcome change. Both this track and the next entitled A Trust Ungained are two excellent mixtures of heavy drone, industrial and power electronics. One great moment is the subtle melodies buried under distortion which appear towards the end of the last track.

Side B starts off with an excellent warmly distorted drone and absolutely seething vocals in Residual Contempt. The next track is the title track and begins with an epic melody line and sticks with it. Featuring extremely lo-fi production it has a certain quality to it that reminds me much of the work of early Navicon Torture Technologies or Human Larvae. The last track Vitriol ups the ante for the entire album by heightening – even more – the emotional atmosphere in an excellent array of various synthesizer melodies and sound design elements to form an extremely strong ending for this release.

Flaying the Pyre is an album that starts out good and just gets great. Highly recommended to fans of dark electronic music crossover noise acts. This is a project that should be circulated more heavily but instead hides as a diamond in the rough for those random enough to come across Russo’s work. Great stuff here, reminiscent of early NTT, Human Larvae and Grunt.

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