Everything you need to know about March to the Sea comes in its first 10 seconds-- and that's not a criticism. Sledgehammer drums, cavernous bass, strangled guitar, and caged-animal cries fire up opener "Teaching to Suffer", then spend the next 24 grueling minutes wrestling for sonic space. Three albums in, AIDS Wolf's monastic commitment to brutal prog-punk and strident no wave has hardened their music from a rough lump of coal into a jagged diamond. In fact it's gotten so hard that few surprises can permeate it, but that shouldn't matter much to anyone already on their side.
Such unrelenting devotion gives the Montreal group a lot in common with the also-bludgeoning, also-questionably-named Brooklyn three-piece Child Abuse. Both rely on non-stop effort and sonic demolition that steamrolls over indecision or subtlety. But I'll give a slight edge to AIDS Wolf because they've immersed themselves more completely into the form, like method actors sunk so far into roles that their craft is hard to detect. Prog-punk can often come off like an exercise-- musical weight-lifting that's more about dogmatic execution than listener engagement-- but here it sounds more inspired than clinical, less a stylistic choice than a calling.
Still, with their hammering beats and workman-like repetitions, AIDS Wolf can sound more like lumberjacks hacking at trees than musicians playing songs. What saves March to the Sea from being just a workout-- and distinguishes it from forefathers like Flying Luttenbachers (whose Weasel Walter mastered the album)-- is Chloe Lum's singing. A desperate scream mixed with a lunatic warble, her style could easily sound contrived. But she infuses it with a convincing humanity, much in the way Lydia Lunch fuses snotty put-on with harrowing emotion, or how John Brannon makes atonal howls feel melodic. Which is not to say Lum sounds like either of those singers. Her voice is unique, and at points-- like when she moans over Alex Moskos' neck-running riffs on "Wet Winds"-- she turns lonely dismay into something oddly universal.
That track, like most of March to the Sea, is a sprint. But the album closes with a marathon-- a 10-minute cover of Throbbing Gristle's "Very Friendly". You might expect a change of pace here, but AIDS Wolf turn the original's detached séance into a microcosm of the rest of the album. Apparently anything fed into their sonic blender comes out as the same grisly stew. For lots of groups that would be a shortcoming, but with AIDS Wolf the words "monolithic" and "powerful" are two sides of a coin-- one that they're getting better at endlessly flipping.
