Jamie Christ is a busy bloke. One of those annoyingly talented busy blokes. He is a tattooist of some renown up at Red Hot and Blue in Edinburgh where he adorns folk with stunning blackwork pieces. This is where I knew him from and has also heard of his Hellnoise rituals that incorporate tattooing with extreme music. Jamie has been part of the Scottish underground music scene for a few years but Christwvrks is a project that declares “The Band is Dead” and is presented as a mutli-media artwork designed to brutalise and captivate the listener in equal measure.

Jamie has suffered great loss in his life and has sought to soothe this in himself and others through his charity “Reclaimed by Ink” whereby he tattoos over the scars of folk in exchange for a donation to a mental health charity. Good work that man!

However, it appears that all these other endeavours are not quite enough and “Messiah Complex” finds Mr Christ utilising a different colour palette of varying hues of black and grey.

The music is a fucked up mix of noise, black metal, power electronics and industrial with even some gabba beats to get the heart pounding.  At times it is chaotic with layers of sounds competing for the listeners attention but there is more than enough melody to keep my attention and the tracks are memorable rather than the mesmerising white noise that can sometimes be associated with other noise and drone projects.

At times I was reminded of early Ministry – filth encrusted industrial primitivism beats its way out of many of the tracks on Messiah Complex backed by the kind of lo-fi electronic drum hits that permeate only the most underground of dungeon synth and bedroom black metal. Christwvks manages to sound gloriously overblown and utterly lo-fi often during the same song.

The album is obviously dark – many demons, personal and societal are, if not exorcised, then at least let out of the box analysed, beaten with a stick before being returned to their fetid cell to be dealt with later.

What is evident from this piece of art is that Jamie is not just willing to show the world his despair and anger but also his fragility and hope. The bombast of a track such as Chaos in My Head blends into the eerily melancholic Dragged Back To Life with its bizarre blend of harsh noise and haunting beat – I couldn’t work out if I was deeply disturbed or enthralled and meditative.  The words on this album are a mix of excerpts discussing religion and humanities darkest depths, Jamie Christ’s tortured rasped industrial vocals and UK hardcore style shouts  and some quite beautiful singing as  featured on the video “single “ A New Corpse and elsewhere.

“Fuck My Life” is like Discharge or The Exploited being remixed by The Berzerker in the early 2000’s. It is the sound of an angry mob clad in leather masks and rubber shirts emblazoned with neon fairy lights beating you with spiked bats whilst strobes flare in your brain and a dungeon. Yeah. It’s great.

The Black Swan that follows with overlays of female voices is like someone opening a door to the real world from the previous scene but the mad drums and crazy vocals drag you back just as you are about to escape. Here I can see some similarities with Aphex Twin and the delightful textured dancescapes that he creates.

The title track is a descent into insanity, grind meets harsh noise whilst the declaration that inspires this collection “The Band is Dead” is 30 seconds of crazed Gabba that must be meant to destroy any gun slingers.

A New Corpse appears to be a meditation on depression and suicide and I suppose could be seen as the crux of the piece as the culmination of Jamie Christ’s agony over his brother taking his own life comes to the fore.  As such it is a mix of electronics, pained angry cries, beautiful melodious singing and sombre basslines over a hideously harsh electronic drumbeat. The heartbreak is palpable.

Just as his charity offers new hope through the covering of scars Christwvrks makes sure that the listener leaves the project with some light to walk towards in Rebirth.  Piano, church organs, space electronics, with a soupcon of harshness converge to give a representation of hope and reincarnation which is tainted with the pain of that birthing process. I was reminded at times of Devin Townsend here.  The highly compressed and modified vocals are still soaring and reverential and perhaps even messiah like.

The Messiah Complex is a complex artwork that opens up wounds that we all unfortunately endure. It prods about in those secret places we like to keep covered and sends current across nerve endings that are normally protected. Yet, behind its dark and probing nature is the feeling that there is a healing process that follows, like the ripping of a plaster off a festering wound, the light and air will turn the gore into a scab which will heal.  Powerful stuff.

(8.5/10 Matt Mason) 

https://www.facebook.com/christwvrksarmy

https://apocalypticwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/album/messiah-complex