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ALTAR OF FLIES  Sacred Trails  7 INCH + CD   (A Dear Girl Called Wendy)   14.98
Sacred Trails IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Back in stock! Here are more fantastic factory nightmares and grinding industrial death visions from this Swedish artist, whose work has consistently impressed me over the past couple of years. This latest offering of murderous industrial filth comes from the A Dear Girl Called Wendy imprint, a combination 7" and CDR set that features more of Mattias Gustafsson's grimy looped drones, ghostly field recordings and harsh noise in an extremely limited edition of one hundred hand-numbered copies.

The first half of "Sacred Trails" begins with a steady mechanical throb and deep pulsating black buzz, then erupts into a crushing cacophony of feedback, junk metal avalanche, garbled electronic skuzz, and massive, earthquake like low-end rumbling. It breaks away at various points on the a-side into more restrained industrial ambience and subdued scraping rhythms and grating lock grooves; then, disturbing chuckling and looped giggling appears, sounding like the clipped and edited sounds of a madman played over a slow fade-out of black drift. The b-side picks up the second half with another set of minimal lock groove like clicks and rumbles, which are slowly overtaken by a heavy heartbeat like throb and high piercing feedback and smears of black buzzing synth, transforming the sound into a monstrous rhythmic scrapescape of abused metal and skull-drilling sinewaves, heaving squelch and strange metallic ringing, clicking spokes in a torture machine slipping into place while heavy rumbling electronic frequencies rise and fall. When the vocals show up this time, it's in the form of sickly moans and distressed cries in the background, while the rhythmic elements fall away and the side ends with the constant surging swell of rumbling feedback before the record comes to a stop.

The disc features another three longer tracks: the first, "Axis III", starts with rising bursts of heavy distorted synth which are joined by a series of crunching sounds, like those of someone treading through deep snow, or charred ash, while more layers of sinister electronic drone and distorted synth pile on, inhuman screams suddenly rip through the air, and the whole goddamn thing starts to take on the feel of one seriously horrible nightmare. Deep bass frequencies drone and flutter beneath swarming buzz and those crunchy, crackling sounds. The rusted creak of an ancient water pump introduces the second track "Helveteseld", then moves into dark, gleaming shafts of droning synthesizer and soft drifting feedback; it's actually quite pretty here at first, but then the soft ambient drone-music is suddenly sucked into a monstrous maelstrom of bass rumble and industrial noise, another violent scrap metal avalanche strafed with feedback spikes and corroded creaking metal. The final fourteen minute track "Nervklen" is more minimal at first, a series of high frequency drones laid over a percussive rumble and menacing electronic drone, then moves into a very weird stretch of looped ogres growling and barking dogs and some deformed metal pounding, getting more surreal and nightmarish as it goes on, blasts of harsh feedback and lurching metallic noise coming up against the manipulated demonic voices and loops, evolving into a mutated form of power electronics with rhythmic structure and looped voice elements, but woven into a fucked up industrial loopscape.

Another grim, heavy offering from Gustafsson. The record and the disc are packaged together in a thick 7" sleeve, and again, it's extremely limited, and doubtful that we'll be able to get more of these once we sell out.


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