I've gotten a perverse kick out of the vitriol that some Relapse-followers spewed in the direction of the label and the album since its release in 2019; if you read enough of these rabid, wounded ranting, one might think that the iconic extreme music label has suddenly tried to transform itself into a Hip Hop / EDM entity. This is obviously ridiculous and at some level a complete lack of knowledge regarding the evolution of extreme music back in the wild-n'-wooly 90s, though the folks behind Zonal do bring a different sense of heaviosity to this long-dormant collaborative project; what Zonal deliver is pretty much a direct line of succession from the members previous 1990s-era music as Techno Animal and ICE, the former of which appears to be getting reactivated since the release of Wrecked. This is great news for us fans of UK bass armageddon, of course. Zonal's particular makeup is pretty outstanding, as well; here the duo of Kevin Martin (The Bug) and Justin Broadrick (Godflesh / Jesu) joined by brilliant shape-shifting experimentalist Moor Mother (aka Camae Ayewa) for the first half of the album.

The first half blew me away, so witchy and dreamy and ghostlike, Moor Mother's languid rhymes drifting and groaning and echoing over surging waves of obsidian-black drone and gargantuan bass frequencies, opener "Body Of Wire" shuddering and rumbling like some titanic, miles-high eldritch machinery shifting out of a millennia-long sleep amid MM's eerie, almost shamanistic emanations; that first track is massive and incredible, layers of oneiric and often disturbing rhyme washing over immense isolationist sound-currents. An entry-point into Wrecked's ultimate dystopian beatscape, perhaps; the following slow-motion boom-bap hallucination "In A Cage" drops gooey snare hits and slowly shuffling, vaguely jazzy cymbal shimmer, cyberpunk wordplay pulling down the still-mesmeric aurora of that opener to reveal the uglier, oppressive, asphalt-caked nightmare that blooms across the rest of the album. Those growling bass lines are cable-thick, distorted like a stem track pulled right out of early 90s Godflesh, but buoyed by the lighter touch of the drum tracks. Martin's brilliant beatcraft and spatial dynamics are in full-on force alongside Broadrick's klaxon-like electronics, astounding cinematic synthcloud formations, veins of monolithic heaviness and the crushing low-end thud underpinning it all.

The other Moor Mother collab tracks like "System Error", "Medulla", "Catalyst" all flow oceanic across the disc, lines between vintage death-dub, industrial hop-hop, breakbeat, electronic noise, dark ambience, early dubstep,, metallic power-dirge all melted beyond recognition. One thing that remains a constant through the album's sprawl is the unrelenting darkness of it all, again conjuring and breathing life into a prescient series of dystopian signal sets and outlaw symbology, insinuated with strength and anger, snarling critiques of racial and socio-economic issues, bits of Lynchian surrealism, and moments of horrific realization that sputter into being above the impossibly cavernous snare / bass drum grooves and that creepy-as-fuck reverb-soaked skitter....man, this is both the perfect soundtrack and the worst accompaniment for doom-scrolling , as far as your mental; health is concerned, but that like everything else, is ultimately in your hands.

The latter half then detonates even heavier rhythms as the core duo shift back into that classic Techno Animal-method of ultra-heavy, industrial-formed breakbeat hypnosis and distorted bass lines that chew right through my speakers. This stuff is crushing, from the layered trance-state and heavy dub-colored architecture of the title track, almost metallic-levels of sheer crunch getting laid out over those monstrous drumbeats, to the paranoid ambience and gutter-squelch of "Debris" that evokes some of the more recent Scorn output, the drum and synth sequencing constantly evolve, more sounds and percussive elements moving in and out of the field of vision, complicating these soundtracky symphonies of Twenty-First Century urban decay and social collapse...."Black Hole Orbit" threatens to merge Hyperdub-style shadows with hellish blown-out dirge and comes as close as I've heard; darksynth colliding with fearsome industrial metal rumble and crustacean scuttling trip-hop qualities on the schizo-fractured "S.O.S." - I dare you to crank the bass up and blast the volume on this one; but Zonal chills the room with the last two tracks "Alien Within" and "Stargazer" that jettisons everything back into deep, dark ambient territory again, a vast and immersive murkscape lined with spiraling, icy minor-key melodies.

Can't wait to hear what's next from this superb collective. I can't get enough apocalyptic / dystopian industrial dub crush.