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AUN / HABSYLL  split  LP   (Public Guilt)   16.98


A killer pairing of two of the more adventurous outfits currently working within the realm of the slow and low, each delivering their own unique version of mind-blotting doom/drone. The first side has Montreal's Aun contributing two new tracks of swirling, beat-driven black psychedelia, and the second caves in on itself with a stunning black pit of body-destroying improv-ultradoom from France's Habsyl...

Aun starts their side with the dark, languorous shoegazer drone guitars and sheets of swirling electronic tones of "Druids", with some heavy duty boom-bap trance shambling in and turning it into a sort of MBV-influenced space rock drift crossed with some dark, doomy trip-hop, much like the sound of Aun's latest album on Important. Washes of blackened feedback become expanses of deep cosmic drift, the slow break beat drumming emerging into a field of strange psychedelic guitar noodlings, droning feedback and distorted, metallic riffage, getting darker and more ominous as it goes on, propulsive and strangely melodic as well, those swells of guitar crashing over the swirling industrial ambience in the background, heavy and rumbling rhythmic crush, like some charred, doom-laden Massive Attack-esque atmosphere. The other track, "Fall Out", drops another propulsive groove into a blackened, industrial dronescape.

The motorik beat propels the sound forward across a droning guitar riff and dark kosimiche synths and effects, becoming another sinister mechanical throb, the sound eerie and desolate, deep wheezing and clanking metal appearing over the smoldering industrial backdrop, bits of shifting ambient sound and glitchery moving at the edges...

In response, Habsyll unleash the twenty-three minute "IV", a massive side-long expanse of black improv doom that starts off with a few minutes of minimal metallic clatter that eventually shifts into a creepy, rumbling soundscape. A deep bass pulse appears, hovering in a cloud of distant gong-like booms, strange wheezy organ melodies and streaks of feedback, cavernous reverberations and mutated Middle Eastern melodies, until suddenly the drums begin to scuttle in after a couple of minutes, heralding the massive slab of metallic crush that rumbles in, the sound coalescing into a huge wall of motionless black doom. This glacial, barely moving heaviness fills the space, grinding in place, the guitars breaking down into disintegrating washes of distortion, the drummer summoning swarms of cymbal hiss, then suddenly surging forward with huge halting blasts of distorted metallic sludge, the chords left to hover and echo and dissipate over the super spare drums. It takes a few minutes for the vocals to finally appear; when they do, it's a pair of terrifying throat tearing themselves open, one voice letting loose with low, vomitous snarls, the other lost in a frenzy of high-pitched, maniacal shrieks. The drums finally begin to move again after a while, slowly getting more active, breaking into abstract, jazzy fills for a while before locking into a pummeling dirge, then suddenly erupting with the rest of the band into a furious, fast-paced freakout, a thrashing, angular burst of speed and energy that quickly falls apart back into a black static crawl, slowly dissolving once again into pitch black formlessness as the drums decay and disappear, breaking off one last time at the end into a pounding crush of heaviness before decomposing into washes of feedback and drift and electronic warble and total darkness. Much like their debut album that I reviewed/listed a while back, this is total void music, taking the abstracted doom of Khanate down into the blackest depths of free-improvisation.

Beautifully presented by Public Guilt in a high quality jacket with artwork by Stephen Kasner, in a limited edition of 500 copies on 180 gram vinyl. Includes a digital download code.