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�RABROT  I Rove  CD   (Fysisk Format)   14.98


It's been a LONG time since we last heard anything from Norwegian noise rockers Arabrot, but we certainly hadn't forgotten about them; their releases on Norway Rat from earlier in the decade were some of the sickest outbreaks of noise rock that we'd heard, and their notorious Moneyshot 7" was easily one of the most outrageous records that we've ever carried here at C-Blast. Packaged in a full color sleeve with sheets of actual sandpaper on the inside of the cover, that Ep was deliberately constructed to damage the record, so that when you played it on your turntable, there was a constant layer of surface noise and pops that the band wanted to have added to their (already quite hideous) sludgy noise rock. As much as we loved that record and their subsequent album Proposing A Pact With Jesus , we've been hoping to see something new from the band, and now we've finally gotten a hold of new Arabrot, released by the band's new label Fysisk Format.

As soon as we started listening to I Rove, it was clear that things had changed for the band. The throbbing, bass-heavy sludge rock was still present, but now it's weighed down with an even heavier guitar sound and a much bleaker, more doom-laden sound. The Cd features three new songs, and the twenty-minute title track that opens it takes up the bulk of the disc; it opens with a surge of industrial pummel, a lurching bass line crawling over industrial percussion and swells of choral chanting, the sound surprisingly Swans-like at first, dark and very dramatic. Then, it all kicks in full-power at the four minute mark, the drums finally crashing in as the music draws back, coiling into seething tension, and then explode into a crushing riff that rivals anything from the Melvins. When the band kicks into the strange mantra-like chorus (with the singer repeating the line "And I rove, and I rove, and I rove and I rove and I rove...." over and over), it gets seriously evil sounding, the discordant guitars scraping and writhing over the bottom end massiveness, the vocals taking on a black metal like raspiness, and weird buzzing electronic fx swarming around. As they grind through this twenty minute saga, the song takes on a Neurosis-like ebb and surge, but the recording becomes super hot and distorted, the levels peaking out and everything sounding extremely fried out, seeming to even skip at times, turning into this overdriven, over-modulated dirge, with a haunting melodic hook lurking just underneath the churning distortion and crushing low end. It becomes more blown and distorted until the music turns into a roiling black maelstrom of distortion and clipped drumming and in-the-red chaos with that eerie guitar melody and smatterings of piano continuing underneath it, until it's a Merzbowian blur of noise at the end.

Not at all what we were expecting before we threw this on, this song is fucking amazing, and shows that the band has really evolved since the last time we heard them.

The other two songs are shorter, more direct blasts of noisy heaviness: "The Serpent" serves up some evil, catchy noise rock with massive metallic crunch, a grinding angular groove, freaked-out screaming vokills, shifting into a catchy stop start riff with some weird sing-song poppiness emerging out of the muck. Then the band busts out a cover of "The Money Will Roll Right In" by Fang, and they take the burly punk of the original and turn it into an awesome Jesus Lizard-like rocker, fast paced and lurching and crushing, and easily put their own unique stamp on the tune.

We love hearing that classic Am Rep/Touch And Go noise rock sound being appropriated by newer, heavier bands, and Arabrot continue to hammer that sound into their own ugly, caustic image, and with I Rove have easily come up with their darkest and most ominous music so far. Highly recommended. The disc comes in a gorgeous arigato-pak case with embossed metallic silver artwork and an insert, issued in a limited numbered edition of 1000 copies.


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