Listen, as much as I try to wrap my head around sheer ambient, noise acts like Japanese Comedy Torture Hour, Zweizz, Einsturzende Neubauten, Diagnose: Lebensgefahr, Merzbow, Namanx, (James Plotkin produces this release for you fans out there) and such, I simply can’t do it.

Though this French trio utilizes traditional instruments (guitar, drum, bass), mistakenly described as some form of bizarre Krautrock meets industrial black metal landscapes in the press release, the truth is they are often droning, simple interludes or short lived filler (i.e. “Burial Ground”, “Woodchurch”) littered around what amounts to four painfully long ‘songs’ of industrial grating, buzzing, feedback and samples that at times coming across as the unofficial soundtrack to the Tetsuo movie.

Call it what you will; dark ambient, industrial noise, ritual noise, industrial drone or whatever the fuck, the fact is for me ‘tracks’ like “Obedience”, “Woodchurch” and the song with what i consider the albums only real ‘riff’, “Disease” make my head hurt and will make yours hurt too-that is unless you consider standing on an airport runway for 40 minutes while you strum the same three bass lines with a table saw running continually next to you a great musical concept.

While some of their black metal countrymen are indeed pushing the boundaries of black metal extremity, Aluk Tolodo are simply relying on the fact that to some metal fans-extremity is brilliance and that on some other subconscious level, stuff like this is above and beyond mere human perception (too right-my dogs thought this was terrible also), but in truth is no more than a noisy gimmick dressed up as art.

[Visit the band's website]

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