If you walk into a record store, that is if you are lucky enough to have one in this day and age, wander over to the metal section; assuming that is if the staff have put this album in that place rather than avant-jazz or anywhere else, the bright orange cover is going to leap off the shelf and slap you round the face like an injection of vitamin C. Yes that was a long sentence and I appreciate that but it is a rather breathless album so be prepared for a few of them perhaps. Back to the cover, well the Trine & Kim art work is a good reflection of the insane music and perhaps the band wanted to make it very clear that this was their work and not that of those other depressive Swede fucks. This may well be bipolar but it is whilst hitting the up, up, up spike of it all. When down hits it is going to be a cataclysmic drop but the conclusion of the Blackjazz trilogy is going have you hitting the heady heights before that happens.
I wonder how many of us have actually heard the first four Shining albums before they hit upon the idea of reinventing themselves as a ‘Blackjazz’ band? I am intrigued myself but even though I have only been, like many with them since they first slapped me silly with that and the date I saw them at supporting Enslaved, the second play was pressed on this new album it was instantly identifiable.
‘I Won’t Forget’ has an almost industrial feel about it and Munkeby sounds like Trent Reznor at his best. It comes as no surprise reading that Sean Beaven co-produced and mixed this and the first single off the album with its skewed harmonics, beefy electro backbone and insane grinding tumult is a manic and precise juggernaut of sound. Of course the sax blazes in and adds to the crazed vibe giving off that progressive jazz flow like a dose of dirty speed and swarming like an irritated hive of killer bees. The track name is hollered just in case you had forgotten (ha ha) nope that is quite impossible. The album is kept very compact with nine songs each between the 3 ½ to 4 ½ minute mark. There is no sticking around here as one moves straight onto the next and Torstein Lofthus’s drumming marches on driving the pace to greater flurries of muscular rigour. ‘The One Inside’ broods and bites injecting some soulful pathos into the sax solo and some angry snarling distempered vocals which bristle with scorn and contempt. ‘My Dying Drive’ goes all futuristic with its strange robotic pulses before a massive lurching melody steamrolls over you. This has to be heard via big speakers really, my PC ones from the digital download just are not doing it justice. It is going to be monstrous live that’s for sure. ‘Off The Hook’ starts with a yelled bellow and grooves into a linear sounding song, with a verse and all that. Well we are well aware it is going to ride off and go all over the place but then the chorus comes in and gets its claws in. Yes this could almost see the band at their most structured sounding yet. Of course it’s still a gonzoid nutcase of a number and it does go down stumbling lurches and trips over itself just when you think you are off the hook, but that’s probably the purpose of it all.
How could they resist a title like ‘Blackjazz Rebels’ and for all the near sanity of its predecessor this is swiped away into pure bedlam? Whispered vocals, scorched riffs, dynamic peaks and waves and scat drum flurries all combine like an acid trip as someone with a bunch of keys runs around in your brain opening compartments at random. It’s delirious and quite jaw dropping stuff really and utterly unique in our musical world, even if we did do too many substances to the likes of Beefheart, Zappa and Zorn in the past. This is one of those albums I realise I am typing as fast as it is playing to try and keep up with it. Naked Lunch heroin sax as I describe it sees in ‘How Your Story Ends’ and we go all prog mad as the track takes off down the runway and heads up into the stratosphere and beyond. With vocals now gibbering and drooling like they are being spat out by a very mad thing it all makes some kind of sense, well it’s either that or the barking deluge of sonics are going to have you jumping out the nearest window.
There is a galloping zeal about ‘The Hunting game’ and this game strikes as a most dangerous one with no escape as the drums militantly hammer like shotgun blasts and the vocals command taking no prisoners. Sax solo go! ‘Walk Away’ is as fast as the Sisters Of Mercy dirge of the same name is slow. Guitars have that insect like intelligent hive action about them and the track marches like they are protecting their leader who is haranguing them and spitting out orders. Again I am reminded a little of NIN at times with the vocals and perhaps with the instrumentation as nutzoid as it is mixed up with the likes of The Locust and Atari Teenage Riot. Munkeby is now counting up faster than any school learner could ever achieve, practically clamouring “I can do it mum, I can count to ten” in the process. Last song time but no less of an attack as we ‘Paint The Sky Black.’ Some eerie keys from a b-movie are faintly heard in the background but on the whole the song takes form of an approaching storm suddenly hitting and ripping a town to pieces in the process (sorry a bit of a touchy subject at the moment but it fits). It’s a windswept wild old ride (mama) and one that like the album leaves you feeling like you have been dragged not through just a bush but a whole bloody thicket backwards, cut up, spat up and deliriously never to be the same again.
Oof the album seems to have finished, I can stop typing. Go back attempt punctuation, give a score and regain sanity. Well the last might be a mission but it’s that or attempt playing this again.
Can I haz headz bak plz?
(8.5/10 Pete Woods )
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