Atrocious Filth – OVV
Atrocious Filth – OVV
Moans Music / Fabryka Halasu
Release Date: 24/02/23
Running Time: 33:22
Review by Dark Juan
10/10
There is a dinosaur sized, half-finished turkey’s head and neck on the seat next to me. It stares directly into what is left of my soul with it’s dead, wide-open white glass eyes and I’m sure the creepy fucking thing keeps moving in my peripheral vision, inching ever closer to your faithful correspondent as he bashes at this keyboard with increasing fear and a slowly growing panic. I am not safe in this house. All the creepy as fuck things Mrs Dark Juan keeps making are going to one day go on the march in search of their twisted creator and not remain safely in the places that have bought them and made their homes. I am in danger. The velociraptor-sized bird’s head has lurched a perceptible inch or two closer and I swear the fucking thing is threatening me…
Welcome to a normal day in Crow Cottage. I am ignoring the turkey sculpture and its nefarious plans for me and instead listening to Atrocious Filth from Poland. When I requested Atrocious Filth, editor emeritus Simon “The Archbishop Of Banterbury” Black had a giggle at Dark Juan’s expense and claimed, “Well, that’s all you write anyway, innit?”
The above sentence might have been paraphrased, as Simon is a man of cut-glass English diction and Received Pronunciation. He’s also not wrong. Girls’ finishing schools are currently on the alert, and every convent in a thirty-mile radius.
Atrocious Filth were originally formed in 1991 with ex-members of Vader in there, but then went off to do other things, and then got back together in 2016, and this “OVV” album represents only the third recorded release from these worthy Polish heavyweights.
The band combine the uncompromising heaviness and weighty sound of early “Industrial” era Pitch Shifter, the sub-zero, icy coldness of Godflesh and the dissonance and humanity of Murder Inc and Killing Joke. These, as regular readers will know about Dark Juan and his absolute lack of musical taste or discretion, are all Very Good Things, because Dark Juan’s primary musical love (besides the Sisters Of Mercy) is Industrial, in all its forms from EBM and futurepop through to barely listenable noise (hello, brb>voicecoil and Omnibadger!)
Atrocious Filth are a superb bunch of musicians – ‘D’ (the song titles are all letters) shows this off to advantage as the band seamlessly combine Djent, Jazz and Industrial into a horrible to behold new shape and then just start TWISTING the poor music until it snaps in half. It takes you through a maelstrom of harsh dissonance that punishes the senses and only lets up after four and a half minutes of aural torture. There is so much more to Atrocious Filth than mere power and a bit of mastery of their instruments, though. ‘A’ wafts and wefts over swooping atmospherics, a subdued martial drumbeat and almost choral vocals, as a simple, chiming guitar line slowly creeps in and the vocalist groans and cries out, clearly in pain until the band all kick in in a very Nine Inch Nails-esque slow burn of growing, glowering menace patiently building up to bloodlust-sating murderousness – and then, distortion. Building horror threatens to overwhelm the listener whereupon everything calms back down to the martial drumbeat at the start of the song as the desire to murder is sated.
‘O’ is different again, with the counterbeat playing and unsettling time signatures reminding this correspondent of an Industrial Meshuggah. In fact, this sense of unease and unfamiliarity is what sets “OVV” apart from many Industrial releases. Yes, it is unrelenting, uncompromising and heavier than the entire 80s Soviet men’s and women’s weightlifting teams combined and noisier than a room full of Wärtsilä marine diesels, but the music of Atrocious Filth has this curious, organic quality permeating it – like the unsettling movement beneath the skins of carcasses when they are being consumed by bacteria and maggots. Atrocious Filth are the soundtrack to industrial slaughterhouses where humans are the meat being butchered – where skinned and eviscerated men and women hang on meathooks on an ever-moving, endless production line and dark-eyed, silent, pasty children are locked in veal crates, unable to move or turn round, soiled with their own filth and occasionally fed the ground down, pelleted remains of the ones that didn’t grow to a profitable age… It is the sound of the vermin scurrying across the blood soaked floors carrying off the bits of meat that were missed and the disturbing undulation of the offal and the skin and offcuts in the rusted steel bins that are going to the stinking waste piles outside…
As you can see, Atrocious Filth has got Dark Juan’s imagination wound up to an insane and somewhat bloodsoaked degree. Well done, gentlemen. I love music that makes me see things inside my head – I also love music that is blessed with a total lack of compromise and is inventive as fuck and this is where Atrocious Filth really score. Their music is avant-garde and interesting, rather than just jackhammer bludgeoning and if I can dare say it, there is subtlety and layers upon layers to discover on “OVV”. I’ve listened to it three times back-to-back to the point of Mrs Dark Juan retiring to the bedroom in disgust while Dark Juan sits unspeaking and transfixed. Industrial is really not her thing. At least she’s taken that fucking turkey’s head with her…
“OVV” is a nearly perfect album, sound-wise – the production and mix of the music is absolutely on the money here. It allows the bass and guitar to stretch themselves to hearing-threatening levels yet they remain tightly controlled so the percussive assault of the drums and the underlying predation of the synths and electronics can also shine through. No one thing overwhelms the other, which on a record this sonically dense is a pretty staggering achievement.
If you are a fan of Industrial music on the heavier, more metallic side then Dark Juan INSTRUCTS you to obtain this record. Atrocious Filth’s inventive, unusual and fucking brilliant take on Industrial needs to be heard and the word passed on as fast as possible. Kocham ten zespół!
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Opatentowany system oceny rozprysków krwi Dark Juan dla naszych polskich przyjaciół) awards Atrocious Filth the full beans – 10/10 for an Industrial album of singular uniqueness and crushing heaviness, which will be hailed as a classic in a few years. I think it is now.
TRACKLISTING:
01. F
02. N
03. L
04. T
05. D
06. A
07. O
LINE-UP for “OVV”:
Andrzej Choromanski – Guitar
Leszek Rakowski – Bass
Tomasz Bardega – Vocals
Gerard Niemczyk – Drums
Agnieszka Polubinska – Cello in “L”
Tony Kinsky – Vocals on “T” & “O”
Bartlomiej Kuzniak – Textures
LINKS:
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