I've been getting into Actuary quite a bit this year after hearing their sickening side of the split with Bastard Noise that came out a few months ago, along with their stuff that I just picked up on Love Earth Music. It comes out of a true-blue industrial music approach, but Actuary's music has this evil, sadistic energy to it that really reels me in. They make a good match for fellow Californians Bacteria Cult on this split 7", with both bands offering a single track of murderous electronic/industrial filth on a translucent blue slab of wax that is presented in a very nice-looking, kaleidoscopic full color sleeve.

Actuary's "The Self Defies The Soul" is a seething mass of nightmare death drone, possessed by recordings of an axe hacking through a torso and the accompanying shrieks of horror, and snatches of overheard conversation in desperate tones that are draped over a soul-charring synthesizer drone and feedback that scrapes against the edges of your nerves and time-stretched screams of extreme agony, all escalating into increasingly abrasive and harsh levels of crushing sun-blotting black distortion.

Offering an experience that is just as bleak, "Milgram's Participants" (which takes it's title and subject matter from controversial early 60s electro-shock experiments) from Bacteria Cult (featuring Chris Dodge from Spazz/Hellnation/Ancient Chinese Secret/East West Blast Test, Jay Howard from Circuit Wound / Wire Werewolves and Kevin Fetus from Fetus Eaters / Watch Me Burn) layers static-soaked voices over stretched and manipulated drum sounds, sheets of industrial hum and whirr, and slow-motion cymbal splashes, then introduces a crushing percussive loop that transforms the song into a malevolent factory dirge. Heavy stuff.