BRB>Voicecoil & Omnibadger – DISCO
BRB>Voicecoil & Omnibadger – DISCO
Cruel Nature Records
Release Date: 31.10.22
Running Time: 38:11
Review by Dark Juan
10/10
Dark Juan is still suffering upon the couch of COVID bastardness and is very annoyed with it now. So, in a magnificent attempt to stop being a grizzling child who wants some fucking Lucozade and a bit of Crown Court on TV to pass the day like in days of yore, I have instead elected to do a bit of writing about music. And then chose brb>voicecoil and Omnibadger to do it about. Which makes it perilously close to not being music, actually. Be grateful I haven’t been demanding colouring books.
It is a rare but joyous occasion when you are asked specifically by a band who have enjoyed your insane ranting to have a free and pre-release listen to their latest record and be asked to write about it. Stoke-On-Trent denizens Omnibadger (until very recently known as Omnibael, also Stoke is entirely the kind of city that has denizens instead of residents, being dark, industrial and unpleasant) did this as for some unaccountable reason they enjoyed what I wrote about their last release (https://www.ever-metal.com/2022/04/13/omnibael-rain-soaks-the-earth-where-they-lie/ in case you’re interested) and therefore I am duty bound to have a listen to their new collaboration with Newcastle-based noise deconstructor brb>voicecoil entitled “DISCO”. So I have, and here are the words I have chosen to write about them…
Here’s a hint – it’s not disco. It’s about as far from disco as you can get. Omnibadger are quite famous for their absolute lack of regard for tonality and tunes and would much rather record the sounds of an industrial concrete mixer with a fuckton of toasters and nuts and bolts and shit in it, turn it on and chop up the sounds a bit and release that as a song. As stated in the last review, it’s Skinny Puppy and Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse all mixed into one poisonous, dangerous form. It’s heavy as fuck, heavier than an armoured regiment of your mothers in neutronium panties and actually painful to listen to loud. It’s like an extended aural aortic aneurysm.
Although this album is ever so different as brb>voicecoil adds more sparking, malfunctioning electronic dimensions to the absolute aural chaos that Omnibadger are so very capable of, ‘Summer’ being a floating, shining tune that is both uplifting and depressing at the same time, like a summer evening where the weather is amazing but you’re out of beer and there’s no one to go play with and you’re just sat there, relaxed but uncontented. A particular favourite of Dark Juan is ‘Drink The Kool-Aid’, a glorious mix of hirsute, steroid-fuelled power electronics, crunching, squelchy percussion and a preacher ranting about his false god and basically just being batshit insane. Rather like Dark Juan and Omnibadger, generally, what? I’d drag brb>voicecoil into that description as well but I don’t actually know him so I can be too sure what his response would be… Fuck it. He’s as mad as a box of painted frogs as well.
There’s much to enjoy here if you are a fan of the incredibly Industrial. Sounds are mutated from their original forms into howling, demented beasts and fused with other equally tortured noises and somehow something almost coherent is formed – the twelve minutes of ‘Spacer’ being a slow-burning torture garden of roaring and power tools being used upon the lugholes of the unsuspecting listener and the musicians making sure that their listener won’t be getting up again for quite some time, such is the bludgeoning power at their disposal. Gnarly 303 Electro noise blends seamlessly with filthy Industrial Sludge and builds slowly into a shuddering, oil-slicked orgasm of glorious, painful sound that actually physically hurts to listen to loud. Obviously Dark Juan turns that shit up to 11 straight away. ‘Spacer’ is fucking wonderful. Absolutely fucking wonderful, as it smashes Whitehouse and early Pitch Shifter and Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubaten together in a strange kind of musical hadron collider and comes out with something transcendent and punishing.
‘Subhuman’ has a bizarre kind of Punk vibe mixed with the sonic terror of Atari Teenage Riot, the early, electronic Ministry and Nine Inch Nails remix albums and goes straight for the throat and just doesn’t fucking stop squeezing – this and ‘Swastika Tattoo’ being deliberately challenging and fascist-sounding (this is where we will insert the standard joke of that fat oaf Mussolini being able to make the buses run on time), but this album is about paying attention beyond just the front cover of something. Is the swastika on a Nazi or a Hindu? It has been a symbol of light in the East for centuries, long before it was ever a symbol of a bunch of deluded, uniform fetishizing fucknuggets who thought they were superior to everyone else and decided extermination was the answer. No fucker asked the question, and it is a damning indictment of the human race that if one fucking nutjob shouts loud enough there are thousands, if not millions of equally large dickheads who will follow them. To Armageddon even. That’s pretty bastard scary. And that is what brb>voicecoil and Omnibadger have managed to replicate in musical form on “DISCO”. Bit of an achievement, is that. And anyway, like I always have thought about music and art in general – If it doesn’t provoke thought or debate, it’s not art, it’s entertainment, a night out at the disco and frothy and throwaway and ultimately pointless.
This album is not pointless.
How do I score and describe and conclude about this nasty, unpleasant collaboration between Northern electronic sound terrorists and industrial punishers from the Midlands? The record will suffer from its absolute refusal to conform to any musical standard whatsoever and will prove an extremely challenging listen to people who aren’t musically educated, or are only just beginning their journey into extreme music – for this is incredibly extreme, and not at all for the faint hearted. It’s only going to have a small audience for it, but Dark Juan is definitely one of that audience. Omnibadger and brb>voicecoil can do no wrong.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards brb>voicecoil and Omnibadger a full 10/10 for a record that is chock full of power, pain and suffering. It’s a perfect soundtrack to Cenobites taking humans apart, piece by piece. Yet it is more than just sonic violence, it’s an exercise in observation and critique by taking issues head on and butting them into submission.
LINE-UP:
They still don’t want you to know their identities. They didn’t last time and they still don’t, although one is called Jase. I have no idea which one the mysterious Jase is, but he was polite and nice and not at all like someone from Stoke-On-Trent normally is, being as they are normally barely literate savages.
I’m joking. Jesus.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Window Wiper
02. Sister
03. Swastika Tattoo
04. Summer
05. Drink the Kool-Aid
06. Spacer
07. Subhuman
LINKS:
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