My review of Kevin Drumm’s Imperial Distortion from last year has somehow become the most read review on this site since its inception. If I knew that was going to happen, I might have done a better job of it. Left out all that nonsense about Indiana Jones, for a start. Where exactly was I going with that? I hope that at least a couple of readers have stuck around since then, long enough to experience the unedifying sight of me salivating once more over new releases from the house of Drumm.
Malaise is a super-limited 2xC30 release. Yep, that new and seemingly super-fashionable format, the cassette. Somehow Drumm’s music is suited to the format, with Malaise being a being a particularly hissy, blurry, metallic piece of work. After the passive-aggressive Imperial Distortion, this is a return to the ear-scouring malevolence of previous releases like Sheer Hellish Miasmah. The first couple of tracks are brutally segmented, prone to switching between near silence and aural violence at the slightest provocation. It sounds like chrome-plated bees. Being fed into a fax machine. Which is made of sandpaper. The third piece (all untitled) is an oasis of humming guitar, leading almost inevitably to the last side‘s apocalyptic all-out noise assault.
Dominic Pernow, aka Prurient, actually runs Hospital Records, which probably gives him more chance of bagging a collaboration with Kevin Drumm than, say, you. Demonic recitation combines with ominous sounding Drumm drone, horror movie samples and groaning metal to create a gripping and at times gruesome listen. Second track “On This Slab” features some monstrous screaming erupting from within deep, pulsating static; listen closely for an unexpected burst of cinematic strings. “There Died Venus” is truly scabrous, five minutes of pounding, clanking, speaker-shredding rumble, after which “Though The Apple Is Rotten” seems still but no less scary, with its Caretaker-like ghostly melodies, children’s voices, and sinister scrabbling noises. This highly successful collaboration ends in the epic chasm of doom entitled “Comes Another Brood”, typically tumultuous feedback drone underscoring relatively cheerful incantation (“I will no more curse the earth…I will no more destroy”. As I said, it is all relative, I’ll take my relief where I find it).
So, two more vital documents from this most visceral of artists. Both are released via Hospital Productions, although I suspect one will be easier to find than the other.
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