Unable To Abide The Silence Of This World, the last album from the UK death industrial band Shift, was as heavy as I could have hoped for, a furious apocalyptic mass of charred power electronics, grueling factory rhythms, and devastating distorted industrial drone that frequently pushed Shift into blackened industrial territory that reminded me of some of Nordvargr's more CMI-like moments. On the new album from Shift, some of that crushing death industrial sound has been scaled back, though, with the emphasis placed more on towering walls of insanely distorted (yet surprisingly melodic) power electronics. Bulk features three tracks, each one ranging from ten to twelve minutes, each a deafening slab of ultra-distorted synth noise formed from massive layers of churning over-modulated buzz and torrential monsoons of blackened noise, with raging demonic vocals howling and crooning behind the wall of sound. Shift is obviously taking notes from the classic UK power electronics scene here, with Genocide Organ, Whitehouse, Sutcliffe Jugend and Con-Dom all springing to mind when I spin this, but there's also the subversive melodies that surface on the first and third tracks, where huge gleaming veins of cosmic drone and ecstatic harmonies burrow their way through the roaring blast-furnace synths. These two tracks on Bulk remind me of the similar melodic moves found on Prurient's Pleasure Ground, and set this apart from the rest of the neo-PE movement. On the other hand, the middle track is as violently static and putrid a slab of power electronics as you could wish for, a skull-crushing thirteen minute endurance test that encases your brain in a brutal fog of grinding distorted mid-range frequencies. The last track, while having that unexpected melodic quality running through it towards the end, is also a punishing heavy blast of distorto-drone, with the blown-out synths pushed to the limit and turned into a monstrous low-end crush that actually sounds more like the ultra-mangled black-drone of recent Skullflower albums, albeit dunked in tar and set aflame, the destructive rumble so powerful that it threatens to melt your stereo speakers down into a black clumpy mess. Harsh Wall fanatics will LOVE the power on display here, but this is sure to appeal to fans of modern ultra-heavy PE and death industrial as well. The beautiful packaging consists of three separate insert cards, each one printed with spot varnish symbols and full color photos, and the release is limited to 300 copies.