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BROBDINGNAGIAN  Torture Stained Disaster  CD   (Rusty Axe)   8.98


I originally heard the mysterious Brobdingnagian on the latest Rusty Axe compilation disc and the tribute to outsider black metal legends Von that Rusty Axe put out, Sacrifice At The Altar Of The Satanic Blood Angel, and both of their contributions to those compilations were hideous, intoxicating blots of primitive black metal so corroded by noise and distortion that they sounded as much like some old UK industrial noise group as they were basement black metal, blown out and damaged, a wailing psychotic mass of blackened riffs and droning feedback and anguished white-noise vocals that positioned Brobdingnagian somewhere close to the abstract dungeon blackness of bands like Abruptum, Enbilulugugal and Emit.

Those compilation songs were clearly not enough noisy, mutant black metal murk for Rusty Axe, as the label recently released this four song, half-an-hour long mini-album from the band; the music on this disc is even more deranged than their previous tracks, and there are several points on Torture Stained Disaster where Brobdingnagian moves away from anything remotely resembling what we'd call black metal. This disc is fucking awesome though, and opens with "Smeared Faces In The Ruins" which begins with a chaotic blast of ramshackle black metal, sorrowful shrieking vocals and strange melodic riffs mashed with trashcan drums pounding out sloppy midpaced blastbeats, the sound is oddly catchy and actually kinda moving, but then the second half of the songs sees the black metal disappear and leave behind a menacing field of room ambience, a minute or so of quiet that is intruded upon by gasping sounds and scraping metal in the background. This sets up one of the longer tracks on the disc, "Harvester Of Disease", which spreads out for ten minutes with nary a black metal riff in sight; instead, it's a terrifying wasteland strewn with black feedback and buzzing electrical currents, the sound of torture victims screaming in horrific agony in the distance, while booming metallic percussion blasts like bombs, as if huge oil drums and sheets of metal are being pounded in slow motion, with only the occasional distorted cymbal crash to suggest that an actual drumkit is being played. That track is a rumbling, terrifying industrial dirge that sounds like Abruptum being played by Ramleh, or maybe it should be the other way around, an early industrial band dropped into the middle of Hell and forced to bash out a lumbering sheet-metal dirge while the souls of the damned are flayed and skewered all around them.

The title track brings us back to Brobdingnagian's weird black metal, an ominous buzzing guitar riff repeating over and over atop a smoking heap of sampled voices and screams and skeletal doom riffs, a lumbering bassline meandering through clouds of electrical hiss and crackle, cavernous rumblings and thick smears of black feedback, building in intensity as tribal drums start to appear and suddenly eventually explodes into a blast of primitive howling black metal hatred, various screaming voices falling over one another, the band slipping in and out of an epic, blown out dirge and the thrashier black buzz. Finally, "Poison Tongue/Bloody Throat" closes the disc with a heavy, trippy blast of fucked up black metal, the vocals run through some weird processing and coming out an insectile chirp, awesome old school black metal riffs tumbling over sputtering blastbeats and howling reverb winds. And if you let that last track play out, after a few minutes of silence you'll get to hear a blazing Havohej cover! Limited to 501 copies.


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