Whopping album title and whopping band! I went to check out Voices at one of their first shows at the Unicorn. I took the night off as did not want to review them on a first encounter guessing that they were going to make my head spin. That they did along with flattening the place in the process with an unholy and uncompromising sound that has been absent for quite some time. There are going to have to be similarities here with the much missed British institution that was Akercocke especially, if like I, you worshipped the Cocke through so many shows and all their albums. Whilst many waited expectantly for the group to come out of retirement and reform, those of us in the know found it highly unlikely. What I was not expecting though was that three members of the former sharp suited devil worshippers had been crafting a new project along with producer Dan Abela to form Voices but indeed drummer David Gray, bassist Peter Benjamin and one time live keyboard player Samuel Loynes are back.
Musically Voices somewhat defy categorisation although if you take the word ‘extreme’ and double it that should give you a clue. They are neither death metal although none can blast with quite such efficiency as Gray nor are they black although structures can unwind in a chaotic form not too dissimilar.
The album starts for some reason with a track entitled after the fourth largest city in Ukraine Dnepropetrovsk. I had read that whilst many UKBM bands are looking at rural life and times of the past Voices were looking more towards the urban build up and frenzy of busy metropolis life. This is certainly illuminated by their seething sound. We are literally attacked by a clamouring sound like an alarm going off on an industrial complex causing mass panic. It is a bid Godfleshian before the technical riffs and ever battering drums hit a flurry like swarming morass. Vocals are delivered in suitably rancid rasping delivery and bore into your skull as the music itself tries to flatten your brain. Slower and grandiose sees clean vocals harmonically intertwine with the muscular delivery of Eyes Become Black. A yell comes out the speakers and then a welter of abusive noise and the track starts twisting and turning, taking a linear focus, dropping in piano harmony and lilting female vocals. There is loads going on here and it all comes flying thick and fast leaving little time to breathe. One thing that should have struck though is just how damn tight the complex musicianship actually is.
‘Fragmented Illustrations Of Anger’ lurches and has embarks on a skewed assault like someone who simply cannot stand it anymore. It is the musical equivalent of going postal and again that seething feel is all over it in a frenzy that few except perhaps the likes of Portal seem to match of late.
The eleven minute Sexual Isolation starts with some orgasmic arcane guitar riffs and a feel that takes me back to Thousand Suns era Killing Joke. The clean vocals take up a chant and add to the mysterious feel of it all and you dig in as the acerbic guitars cut through things with shrill cadence like razor edges biting and tearing hard then morphing onwards in a wild cacophony of sounds. It’s all rather glorious and quite how they constructed something on this scale and can actually manage to replicate it live is a very interesting question and one that makes the ties between genius and madness all the more apparent.
The album hardly pauses and maliciously batters away throwing things in a head stewing melee at you for not that much short of an hour. The varied vocal styles keep it really interesting and the precision of the music is at times dizzying and jaw dropping in its extremity. Track title ‘Creating The Museum Of Rape’ is enough to make your skin crawl and the disharmonic beastly yells are like torture as is the schizophrenic approach of the music. It strikes as a work of deviant and devious practices from an unhinged mind. Final track is Endless by name and takes the torment to the last level by lulling you into a false sense of security and literally exploding into Christ knows how many BPM and decimating in a venomous and spiteful fury until finally silence once more takes hold.
If you are not hearing voices after all this you may well be in the minority, if you are and they are telling you to go out and kill don’t say you were not warned.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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