BLUE SABBATH BLACK CHEER & IRR. APP. (EXT.) DDTTNBX (W/ THE NEW BLOCKADERS) CD (Phage Tapes) 9.98One of the latest of a series of collaborations between supremo surrealist creep-collage master Irr. App. (Ext.) and blackened post-industrial squad Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, following the crushing menace of 2013's Discordant Convergence. Only this time, the two bands are additionally joined by the pioneering British outfit New Blockaders, whose contrarian "anti-art / anti-music" ideology helped to expand the language and aesthetics of noise music through the 1980s. So this version of the project brings the really heavy guns, a pretty impressive lineup where everyone gets their moment to shine: the album features one track each from Blue Sabbath Black Cheer and Irr. App. (Ext.), and collaboration between The New Blockaders & Irr. App. (Ext.) . But the highlight of this disc has go to be the sprawling, epic-length "Fecundum Excidium" where all three artists join forces to produce a massive, often terrifying wall of sound .
First up is Blue Sabbath Black Cheer's "DDTTNB", a titanic terror-blast of junknoise obliteration that feels like being caught in a matrix-warp of crumbling skyscrapers, shifting mountains of glass and steel swarming with alien glitch-signals and malignant skree frequencies, forming a slow thunderous churn of physical destruction that becomes so massive and engulfing, growing increasingly distorted to the point that it takes on a repetitive, hypnotic quality, like hearing K2 on steroids. This track had previously been released on a limited 12" on Anarchymoon back in 2009, and features some source material from the Blockaders, tying it in to the album's overall M.O.. But that cacophony completely crashes out as it suddenly segues to "D-DDTTFIMBY" by Irr. App. (Ext.) , who counters with another one of his malevolent, surrealistic noisescapes. It transports the listener into the middle of a bad dream, a din of weird animalistic sounds and distant bestial grunts, buzzing electrical currents and rhythmic scraping, the judder of a far-off engine heard beneath sudden breaks into nocturnal quietude, shifting into bleary symphonic dread and nightmare ambience. Even by normal Irr. App. (Ext.) standards, this is wonderfully creepy stuff.
On the nihilistic "Ein Weiteres Beispiel Fur Nichts", The New Blockaders & Irr. App. (Ext.) join together to craft another sprawling harsh junkscape, where the artists proceed to layer scrapmetal clang and crumbling architectural forms with sinister low-frequency drone and crackling electronics into an entropic symphony. The whole thing teems with strange insectile noises as the feeling of tension increases across the length of the track. It crawls.
And "Fecundum Excidium" brings it all back together as the three groups coalesce around the album's most hellish noisescape yet. Dancing between pregnant pauses and quiet, tense passages of acoustic ambience, and blasts of raging crumbling noise, thundering scrap-metal avalanches and crushing distorted power-drones, this twenty-minute descent into bestial industrial horror gets immensely heavy at times, with monstrous, guttural roars thrashing amidst the mechanical grind and squeal, surrounded by weird chant-like buzzing and menacing rustling sounds, taking on the appearance of some hideous meat-machine abomination before finally dying down into a final stretch of absolutely putrid ambient fumes. There follows a shorter untitled "hidden" track of amorphous electro-acoustic drift that wraps this up in a haze of ambiguity, source unknown, but a pretty neat close to an otherwise nerve-wracking listening experience.