A few months past its sell-by date for Valentine's Day, Skullflower's latest excursion into brutal, uncompromising noise-rock is not to be missed by those who'd rather skip the flowers, dinner and dancing, and get straight to the, uh... consummation.
Fucked on a Pile of Corpses storms out of the gate with three quick-and-dirty tracks that sound almost too brief by Skullflower standards. Album opener "Hanged Man's Seed" barely has enough time to sink in its teeth, much less outstay its welcome. By length alone, Fucked is the polar opposite of last year's monolithic, double-disc Strange Keys to Untune Gods' Firmament, which didn't boast a single piece under the 7-minute mark. Instead, Matthew Bower opens with a trio of rapid-fire, structured pieces before the album's second half descends into hellish noise, somewhat in the vein of his 2006 effort, Tribulation.
"Hanged Man's Seed" kicks off the album with big bursts of trebly, shattered-glass static, backed by rumbling low-end oscillations. It's a compelling piece, but far too fleeting; this could've been a highlight on its own, had it been stretched out onto side-length vinyl. Instead, it quickly segues into "Viper's Fang," which boasts one of Bower's catchiest riffs under his Skullflower alias: a lo-fi guitar-and-drum motif buried in mounds of reverb and static. Strip away the trebly noise, crank up the subwoofers, add a vocalist of some variety, and "Viper's Fang" might as well be doom metal, or Mogwai-esque instrumental rock, or—you name it.
After a few quick jabs, Fucked on a Pile of Corpses descends track-by-track into Bower's comfort zone: thick mounds of hookless, joyless noise. Perhaps my favorite aspect of Bower's work (as compared to the purely digital racket of today's less creative knob-twiddlers) is the organic feel—derived from human instruments, if not always from human impulses. Accents like the howling, black metal-esque vocals of "Anubis Station," alongside the distinct, guitar-based feedback hovering over the album like a slow-passing thunderstorm, link Skullflower's would-be alien sounds back to humanity.
The most difficult piece is "Tantrik Ass Rape," which lacks the hummable hook of "Viper's Fang," the earthquaking rumble of "Hanged Man's Seed," and the shoegazy smear of "Sleipnir," which closes the album. Instead, "Tantrik Ass Rape" is more akin to Bower's raw, long-form composition on Strange Keys: deep listening for drone connoisseurs, brimming over with physical, unrefined noise.
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