WICKED KING WICKER
'Evolving'
COLD SPRING RECORDS
This is doom distended through an evolutionary process of reductio ad ruinam. The characteristics of doom are taken ever further down its blood-soaked path until any recognizable aspect of the origin dissolves into chaos. But, just as we find that in order is the seed of chaos, also in chaos is the seed of order. Sonic forms bloom and explode, germinate and decay. The only constant is the noise, which evolves and shifts, like a kaleidoscope that sticks needles in the eyeballs rotating the eyes instead of the tube.
The titles make a fantastic element of the whole. Together, the sounds and title of 'The Devil Must Learn The Limitations Of The Host' is what the sound of a hellish Hieronymus Bosch triptych made flesh could be. The soft drums and feedback howling like an eviscerated, but still slowly crawling beast that is 'A Prayer For Death' feels less like it is conveying a plea for release from pain but is like a scream begging to be annihilated in a most infernal ecstasy.' Zen And The Art Of Nihilism' would be the perfect soundtrack with a title to match for a time lapse video of a Shingon monk performing the self mummification ritual. 'The High Exalted Nothing' treats its central distorted bass riff as a bridge across the Abyss. The riff is struck and repeated like a distorted mantra, washed with a drizzle of acidic high pitch static while the sound of the damned moaning and exhaling rise from below.
Some moments reminds of Controlled Bleeding's 'Swallowing Scrap Metal' pieces, but with a foundation of rhythm and in fleeting moments even near melodic passages hiding beneath the slow-grinding revolutions of the noise machine. This is the kind of release that hands out its rewards in proportion to how often the listener returns obsessively to its corrosive soundscapes.