header_image
BASTARD NOISE  If It Be Not True  2 x CD   (Vermiform)   17.99
If It Be Not True IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

��Even though the esteemed experimental/punk label Vermiform Records has been defunct for over a decade, your intrepid bin-crawlers here at Crucial Blast managed to track down some of the last available copies of the label's crushing 1998 double CD from Man Is The Bastard offshoot Bastard Noise, If It Be Not True. This collection of brutal electronics from the notorious experimental noise outfit has been out of print for years, and this is the first time we've ever been able to stock it here. I'd been hunting after this album for ages, a collection of some of Bastard Noise's earliest recordings mostly recorded between 1992 and 1994 back when both Man Is The Bastard and Bastard Noise were actively co-existing. It's classic electronic destruction, a mixture of the sort of abstract oscillator-driven soundscapes and violent "caveman electronics" that defined their early 90s output, spread across two discs and totaling nearly an hour and a half of brutal psychedelic noise.

�� Early on in their career, Bastard Noise were essentially creating a mutant version of power-electronics filtered through the barbarism of the early West Coast powerviolence scene, and when they cranked their home-made electronic noise machines to full blast, the sounds that they produced could be fucking terrifying. Expect nothing less than caustic sonic skullfuck: chirping Morse-code like signals are rattled off over the sounds of malfunctioning heart monitors and heavy distorted pulses; heavy distorted synthesizer drones throb and rumble; blasts of abrasive glitchery and juddering static-drenched noise scorch sprawling sound-collages of jumbled bible scripture and evangelical Christian sermonizing layered across disturbing electro-acoustic sound sculptures in ever more disorienting patterns; eruptions of ultra-distorted squelch and swarming insectile electronic buzz fill the air in suffocating black clouds of noise. These abrasive, abstract noisescapes are often accompanied by band leader Eric Wood's brutal, almost death-metal style vocals, a guttural, tortured bellow that brings a whole new level of murderous menace to these electronic sound sculptures. Some of the highlights on Be Not True include the sputtering robotic horror of "New Mexican Radiation" and the nauseating death-drones of "Leeches", the sheet-metal savagery of "Ready, Willing, And Able" and "Untitled 2" with their terrifying witch-screams and bellowing bestial vocals drifting high above the distant metallic reverberations and oil-tanker percussive rumblings, which grow more garbled and nightmarish as they track unfolds. Equally crushing are the bass-heavy locust-electronics of "Attempts At Revival" and the disturbing cardiac trance of "Animatronic Blood Harvest", but the album features some moments of almost meditative minimalism as well, like the super-minimal drone of "Control Holiday ". The heaviest, most crushing moments of sonic violence appear via the soul-flattening pneumatic doom that arises on tracks like "Deceleration Range" and "Equilibrium Tremor", so monstrous that they begin to resemble the charred-black industrial sludgescapes of The Human Quena Orchestra, intensely heavy and utterly oppressive fields of carnivorous black drone-death. Like most of the other releases that came out from Bastard Noise in the mid 90's, this drips with the band's misanthropic worldview and excoriation of technological society; few "noise" groups have managed to channel the sound of Western civilization collapsing in slow motion as effectively as these guys. The two discs are housed in a jewel case that comes in a screen-printed manila envelope that also contains a twelve-page booklet of lyrics and artwork, released in a limited edition of 940 copies.


Track Samples:
Sample :
Sample :
Sample :
Sample :