At this point, I won’t even try to guess who The Body will collaborate with next – their network of influences, friends and inspirations just draws from beyond what we can comprehend and understand. They are just too prolific and unpredictable. Too fucking crazy and with not enough fucks to give to allow listeners and their fans any kinds of cues on what they might be up to. So, while it’s not a surprise, it also IS kind of a surprise (an awesome one) to see them team up with Neil Imperial Jameson of Krieg, and deliver one of the most hate-bloated and filth-fueled records of the year. On one hand you might think: “What could Krieg and The Body ever sound like playing together?” True, this splicing of diametrically different talent is highly hard to foresee or predict, due to the bands dramatically opposed styles. On the other hand, at times there is no need to overthink things. Sometimes the simple sum of the parts is what you get and what also makes the most sense. And without saying that this work is by any means just the simple sum of its parts – it is also true that this collaboration is also a very honest, bullshit-free and tangible representation of what the two bands sound together when simply set one next to the other, and gathered into a recording studio to come up with the most vile and crude music the could envision. In essence, since it is Krieg and The Body making this music, it should also come as no surprise if it sounds also exactly kinda like Krieg and The Body together….
Chip King’s hated bark and Jameson’s diabolical screeches are both here together as clear and familiar sounding as ever, and while The Body have opted for a more industrial/noise approach here in the instrumental compartment (similarly as done on their collaboration with The Haxan Cloak), the crushing and pounding instrumentals provided by King and Buford, while more sparse, remain as incumbent, classic and just fukcing pulverizing as ever, and Krieg’s staple tormented and sorrowful atmospheres sound just as clear and preserved as you would want them and imagine them to be. In this sense, it is a very pleasant listen to hear the two bands’ recognizable sounds blend together so wonderfully, because both Krieg and The Body are two manifestations of disgust, despair and bitterness in their own ways, so although the bands are poles apart stylistically, their conceptual similarities and stylistic inclinations make them mesh beautifully into something different, captivating and absolutely terrifying.
One thing that is slightly held back here is Krieg’s instrumental section, and at first you may be lead to think that its a The Body – Neil Jameson collaboration we’re talking about. While we’re not sure how many members of Krieg actually took part in the project, it is safe to say that The Body’s songwriting in the instrumental section of the record has certainly prevailed. But after all, having been written and recorded during the Christs, Redeemers and I Shall Die Here sessions in Rhode Island, this collaboration album picks up from where I Shall Die Here left off, showcasing the funereal and oppressive splicing of noise, sludge, and industrial we saw on those releases being infested by a torturous backdrop of howling black metal angst, and being taken to its physical limits, collapsing in a critical mass of harrowing aural disgust and of spellbinding sonic despair. You will hear all kinds of sonic madness and repellant aesthetics in this album being transposed to a whole new level of wretchedness. Many of the two bands’ influences come to life beautifully and unmistakably in this living hole of misery the band conceived: you can hear fragments of Beherit, Coil, Swans, Throbbing Gristle, Godflesh, Buzum, and Merzbow resonate through your skull as the music pours out of your speakers like an endless and cascading tide of hateful slime. What prevails throughout the work however is a depressing, lifeless and miserable mid-tempo that sets the whole record on some kind of deviated “crust” tangent while Neil Jameson accompanies everything with his tormented shrieks. Available now on multiple formats from the legendary At A Loss Recordings.
