Probably since the time of hunter-gatherers to expose your back has meant to make yourself vulnerable or to take a risk. The connection of an exposed back and vulnerability is so long-standing, that is has entered set phrases and idioms. To watch your back means to be careful of other people, to have someone’s back means to protect someone. Bareback sex is unprotected sex. And you only turn your back on someone, if you don’t consider that person dangerous.

The Finnish noise rock/post hardcore band Throat have a new album titled Bareback. The cover features a black-and-white photo of an elderly man’s naked back, from the neck downwards to just below the shoulder blades. He’s reaching with one hand to a spot beneath his neck.

When I looked at the cover photo and read the album’s title I had to think of The Song of the Nibelungs, a Germanic myth about Sigurd, the dragon slayer. Having killed the dragon, Sigurd, in one version, bathes in the dragon’s blood and his skin becomes impenetrable as a consequence, basically making him immortal. His only vulnerability is a small spot between his shoulder blades, where a leaf had stuck to his skin during the bath. The person in Throat’s cover photo is, interestingly, reaching exactly for that spot.

Sigurd, or Siegfried, is later murdered, because his wife gives away his secret, after he cheated on her. Completely unsuspecting he turns his back on a man he considers his friend and is killed by him.

Myths, the oldest stories of mankind, are never pretty, and neither is Throat’s new album Bareback. But who wants to be pretty, if you can be interesting? The subject of vulnerability and risk taking, introduced by the cover and the album title, is picked up and explored further by tracks like Safe and Unsound, Recut, and Bone Strike. The music, often unmelodic and experimental, isn’t easy on the ears. It’s not an album you can listen to while doing something else, it’s no background music. It needs your attention.

The musical influences to be heard are diverse and many. There is Einstürzende Neubauten in the experimental and industrial noise of the tracks Safe and Unsound and Shortage. I hear Quicksand, specifically their song Fazer, in the track Recut. I also hear Nick Cave, Glenn Danzig and Siouxsie in the vocals. Not Siouxsie and The Banshees, but Siouxsie as a solo project. Throat has taken these familiar influences and has taken them apart, dissected and deconstructed them. The end product is absolutely worth your while, but with the exception of No Hard Shoulder, there are no catchy tracks on the album.

(8/10 Slavica)

https://www.facebook.com/ihatethroat

https://ihatethroat.bandcamp.com/album/bareback