Technology is such now, for better or for worse, that the world both physical and virtual is practically overrun with one man bands, in all genres. While this comes with certain disadvantages (who the fuck wants to watch one man and his laptop/mixing desk play “live”?), one of the fantastic things about it is how it allows one person without relying on others to realize the sounds in their own head exactly as they want them. In terms of “extreme” music, whatever the fuck that is in 2013, this has provided ample and exciting fruit in the area where human beings attempt to create utterly inhuman music.
SPERMICIDAL is such a project. Project..pfft..scratch that. “Entity”. Spermicidal is an entity, not a project – it is some of the most spectacularly otherwordly manifestation, and some of the most genuinely frightening music emerging from the underground right now. Debuting with a split tape with the post Wreck of The Hesperus project Ordnance, the first release proper from this disturbing husk (helmed by rennowned Irish experimental musician Cathal Rodgers) arrives in the form of the four track “Vermicide” cassette.
It begins ominously but relatively coherently with the hypnotic dirge of opener “Verminate”, lumbering in with a head nodding rhythym and hook before less than a minute in giving way to a rush of effected vocals and hallucinogenic aural textures that fly at you from every angle. All throughout, the steady, industrious drum beat anchors the madness as much as it is possible to do so – but the torrential drowning effect of layered synthesized sounds are utterly overloading.
“Inferiority” continues the descent into utter madness – more flanged gibbering vocals, the sounds of a reversed bell over spurts of instruments so distorted I can’t quite make out what they are..until a discordant guitar comes chiming in underneath.
Getting the picture? This is a bad acid trip put to music. And Side Two is even more gruelling when “Plebian” skulks into hearing range with what sounds like a factory collapsing in slow motion ushering in an even darker half of the release. And it all ends nightmarishly with the logical endpoint – the dismal, desolate title track; the sound of what little semblence of hope there was in the music finally curling up and dying, and the sound devours itself whole in an orgy of bloodlust and destruction.
I’m struggling to think of a frame of reference for this fantastic ugly music. Recommended if you enjoy the likes of “Public Castration” era Swans, the earliest Scorn recordings, or maybe the likes of the Malignant or Crucial Bliss/Blast rosters (both of which would be a perfect fit for future Spermicidal releases methinks) will be..well, let’s say will be “most prepared” and most likely to enjoy this. Loosely classifiable as industrial music but that’s really only half the story – it’s hard to believe this music was created by a human and not assembled by Survival Research Laboratories. Pushing the bleakest frontiers of sound ever further, Spermicidal is essential bad mood music and paranoid psychedelia for the fearless. My highest recommendation.
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