"Hi, friend, welcome to the neighborhood. As you may have noticed, these walls, ceilings and floors are very thin: when you drag your chair, play music early in the morning and late at night, you're waking up the neighbors. Please be considerate and limit these activities as much as possible. Thank you very much. --Neighbors."
At one point in time, this courteous yet curt note reminding me of my communal responsibilities would have sent me off the handle, provoking an immature retaliation of Modest Mouse's "Paper Thin Walls" followed by Björk's "Army Of Me" blared from ceiling to floor at the maximum volume my sleek, wood-grained speakers could muster. After all, why should I turn down the soothing 6am sound of the Buzzcocks and Pylon when the people below have a baby that screams and hollers at all hours, day and night? Oh sure, they can ask me to make concessions regarding the passions in my life, but if I were to go downstairs and tell the crying little bundle of joy to shutup, all of the sudden I'm the bad guy.
Suppressing my urge for eviction, I eventually complied, and switched to low volume listening, saving up enough money for a decent set of headphones. But the notice came at a bad time, as sitting atop my stack of albums to be reviewed was the most recent Kevin Martin (Techno Animal, The Bug) and Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Napalm Death) collaboration, under the working guise Curse of the Golden Vampire. Mass Destruction. Billed as an electronic melee of hardcore vocals adn hip-hop beats-- with refreshing genre names like "Death Jungle" and "Scum 'n' Bass" thoughtfully offered for my consideration-- I worried whether I would eventually have to critique the album from the point-of-view of my cramped and acoustically dry car in order to hear it properly.
Fortunately, the Honda-experience wasn't necessary, as the muted apartment revealed a level of Mass Destruction I hadn't originally expected-- a low-key, rhythm-driven album with more to it than meets the ear. Though it's hidden beneath a layer of deceptively sloppy beats, the record displays a surprising amount of complex and-- for lack of a better description-- pleasant melodies intertwined between the hardcore vocals and fuzzed out bass.
Dismissing off-hand the soon-to-be ebarrassingly dated political stabs-- including the coquettish "The Myth of Democracy" and "United Snakes of America", the Rogue State-influenced "Oil Money", "State Rape", and "Manslaughter"-- the album stands atop a strong base of amalgamated genre-mashing, oft-times providing windows of inquisitive and novel exploration into the respective worlds of hardcore, jungle, and drum 'n' bass.
"Total Annihilation of Self" begins the album on an incredibly strong foot, as repeated static notes give way to the hard drums and strong bass stomp of this techno meets hardcore track. Beneath a harrowing stream of vocal lacerations, the duo expertly control the breakdown of faux-horns and industrial racket, as moments of relative silence creep up occasionally, adding a sense of dynamic mood and tension. "Parasite" follows suit, initially relying on a straightforward guitar intro, but ultimately succumbing to a cyclical backbeat consistently augmented by whining high register noise and mobile electronic tones.
If the latter pair of tracks derive their influence from the heavy hand of metal and hardcore, then "Iron Ghetto" is the direct product of the visceral beat and lyrical delivery of Ipecac label-mates and hip-hop revolutionaries Dälek. Over a dirty beat, the track focuses on the disintegration of structure nearly as much as it does the genesis, leaking break-beats and distorted vocals over the distorted canvas as if the pair of Martin and Broadrick was more concerned with the medium of their message than the context. "Murderer" continues this electronically-born leitmotif of anger and political respite with more ambient industrial noise high in the mix, as the influence of a less reflective SPK is detectable along with the buried musical authority of Alec Empire's former presence.
Unfortunately, the multitude of ideas on Mass Destruction don't come to fruition in all regards, as a good portion of the disc slips into homogeneous sounds strongly influenced by the likes of Japanese noise artist Merzbow and/or depressingly obvious, disjointed genre collisions. While "Mind Vs Body", "End Civilization", and "Insecticide" all make strong use of a wide variety of influences-- from the dance-music of UK "gare-redge" to the free-jazz of Brötzmann's Machine Gun-- none of the tracks do so with any type of veiled seam, the stitches in their britches producing a glaring and uncomfortable break in the tracks, akin to watching your grandparents dance the Electric Slide at your cousin's wedding reception.
Even with the benefit of musical interludes segueing the path in between such strongly disparate tracks, the schizophrenic nature of the album ultimately leaves a strong sense of awe and wonder as to why the creators couldn't endow the work with a greater sense of flow and unanimity. Despite this, Mass Destruction still comes across as a solid addition to the catalogue of both artists, a composition to be enjoyed on many levels, whether as adroit and patient background music or the confrontational, antagonistic screams of political mantra set to the hellish noise of the underground.
