header_image
BASTARD NOISE  A Culture Of Monsters  CD   (Deep Six)   10.98


Back before the Rogue Astronaut album and the split with Endless Blockade came out, I was always stoked when a new Bastard Noise album came in. You knew that at the very least, Eric Wood and company would deliver another mental blast of sci-fi electronic chaos that would bludgeon you with some of the most extreme oscillator/pedal freakouts imaginable. But when the band started to radically evolve their sound starting with the Rogue Astronaut album, I began to get pretty obsessed with what they were doing, adding a new level of heaviness to the Bastard Noise template, incorporating brutal guttural vocals, and seemingly beginning to return, however slightly, back towards the crushing proggy hardcore sound of Man Is The Bastard, from which BN originally sprang. And when their split with Endless Blockade came out earlier this year, it confirmed exactly what I had been hoping; Wood back on bass, the lineup configuring into an actual band, bringing in an actual drummer, and combining their vicious space-locust noisescapes with pummeling progged-out powerviolence that virtually picks up where Man Is the Bastard left off.

Which brings us to the new Bastard Noise album A Culture Of Monsters. It picks up right where the Endless Blockade split left off, with the new vision of BN fully taking form, taking the sound Of Man Is The Bastard and adding the signature Bastard Noise electronics, and incorporating a MUCH heavier prog influence. The result is some of the most crushing music from this group since Mancruel. The opening title track is a spoken word piece from Nathan Martin (formerly of Creation Is Crucifixion) that sets the apocalyptic mood of the album, which launches right into "Pincer's Movement", a pummeling prog-sludge workout, a sort-of anthemic chorus wrapped around a bass-heavy sludgecore attack, blanketed in alien electronics and chirping oscillator abuse, ultra deep guttural death metal style growls, all spacey and psychedelic but SUPER heavy and groovy, with some amazing bass playing and drumming, like MITB crossed with King Crimson or something. "Me and Hitler" is demonic prog-funk weirdness, gruff shouts trading off with snarling high pitched vokills, complex bass riffing and rhythmic shifts locking into jarring time signature changes, then unleashing a crushing sludgy riff and squealing electronics five minutes in. For a moment, everything falls away and it's just a simple bass melody playing slowly while soft crooning harmonized vocals float across the ether, a dreamy driftscape stretching out for another five minutes, then drops back in with another triumphant riff assault. The album's most surprising moment comes with "If Another World...", a short but beautiful piece of ambient jazz drift, with falsetto vocals smeared over gentle Rhodes piano, totally unexpected and utterly gorgeous. Then "Through Modern Existence (The March of the Trolls)" stomps in, almost like a death metal Ruins jam, spastic guttural powerviolent prog with complex angular bass workouts and thrashy drums, deep grunting vokills trading off with gruff MITB/Infest style shouting, tons of chirping buzzing fx, the whole assault super complex and dizzying and crammed into a mere two minutes. The punishing heaviness and bouncy bass riffs of "Lumberton" turns into a killer stop/start groove, but then suddenly shifts gears into total FUSION JAZZ, Rhodes keys drifting over straight jazz bass lines and layered rhythms, the switch is immediate and seamless, and from there the band continues to weave back and forth between the brutal prog crush and jazz...it's another stunning moment on the album that comes out of nowhere, they pull it off perfectly, and finally kick back into the majestic riff that opened the song at the end. Then the album ends with the ten minute epic "Interior War", crushing slo-mo riffage and bestial vokills combined with electronic fx that pans from speaker to speaker, the song almost taking on a stoner rock swing at times, then flowing into a long stretch of pure minimal ambience, then back into another spastic, jazzy death-prog assault with busy drumming, until it finally finishes in a cloud of cosmic ambience and creepy electronic flux.

It defies expectations of what a Bastard Noise album could sound like. It's the band's most adventurous and BRUTAL album yet. If you dug what they were doing on the split with Endless Blockade, A Culture Of Monsters will cave your skull in. Highly recommended!

Available on both cd and vinyl, with both presented in a full color gatefold package with a full color insert/booklet.


Track Samples:
Sample :
Sample :
Sample :