As I write this it looks as though the ‘American people’ have elected a president. After staring in abject disbelief at their ‘choice’ the black, stripped, hopeless sound of the title and title track here are an appropriate soundscape to slash open your soul to. Harsh vocals, doomed music, that blackened sound of almost-but-not-quite-industrial sounds that immediately bring to mind the idiosyncratic sheet metal cascade of Dodheimsgard against the background of a dwindling planet in the maw of a dying sun. ‘Titan’ piles on the cosmic journey, clean dramatic vocals convinced with the harsh ones in a rhythmic descent; shades of Arcturus and even The Covenant shattering against the icy cold attack. ‘Moloch’ adds an insistent riff as sacrifices are made on this journey, melodic but sinister keyboards, a gravity maelstrom.
Black Hole Generator are the vision of B. E. Nilsen, Vulture Industries main man and Taake/Helheim producer with help from Enslaved and Taake alumni. A mini-cd some ten years back the only previous output, the resultant full length here a consummate work that anyone with a liking for the interstellar tilt of Arcturus’ or DHG’s post-black-metal-weirdshit will love. Harsher than the former, often more immediate but still of the same depth as DHG, Black Hole Generator are like the lightspeed, crazed and buffeted descent of a semi derelict spaceship into a gravity well and whatever happens beyond that event horizon.
There is such a range of sounds here, from the frighteningly accessible but still chaos riddled ‘Beneath A Chemical Sky’ to the relentless crushing of ‘World Eater’, but the nuclear core of this beast remains teeth clenched consistent. The production is superb – loud, distorted, skin shreddingly harsh and yet despite the turbulent chaos of the leading edge, the razor metal wall of noise, the complexity of composition and arrangement flinging this shrapnel into your face is there to be heard and felt. The songs are truly crafted things of destruction and creation, Shiva dancing in flames. Madness and maddening. It requires listening. This is not passive music, your engagement is required, your brain needed. Something it seems no longer valued in a world determined by Morlocks.
I have nothing bad to say about this album. Embrace the nuclear chaos, bid farewell to Terra.
(9/10 Gizmo)
https://www.facebook.com/blackholegeneratorofficial
https://blackholegenerator.bandcamp.com/album/a-requiem-for-terra
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