Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Steel Hook Prostheses - Calm Morbidity (Malignant)



Steel Hook Prostheses (SHP) need no introduction and once again are turning things up a notch releasing Calm Morbidity. As far as Death Industrial goes these guys are dead on target with this psychotic masterpiece of varied drones, synthesizer sounds, and extremely fucked up effected vocals.  
Opening up with “Doused with Acid”, one of my personal favorites, we have classic Death Industrial starting with ramblings of someone, possibly a victim, and then a minute into it you get a heavy loaded background of drone and whirring with the suffocating and terrifying treated vocals of the killer. Whereas “Parathesia”, which is essentially nothing but drone whirs to begin with, until about two minutes in and clanks of metal start knocking, it tries the nerves, then the sound of someone there begins to creep in with the black death eminence that likens to the sound of Lustmord/CMI Black Ambient. While “Deep in the Marrow” starts in with an eerie drone and then leads you down to an underground concrete bunker where an autopsy is taking while the person is alive and awake, although drugged…heavily drugged, but still conscious, the voice of death slowly renders something unintelligible amidst the backdrop of synth washes and grim colors.

With “Cancer Maiden” it’s a stretch of whooshing nestled beneath a spiraling industrial landscape of polluted static, vocals heavily treated and going back and forth between several personalities in an effort to distort the listener into a depth of depravity and unease.  And “Piss Prophet” is another hallucinatory venture into the world of controlled chaos. Its circular pulse of sonar and cloud of static are periodic and controlled but still manage to unleash another sense of unease in the listener, the vocals again being a central part of the soundscape, unintelligible, and an ending being something along the lines of a krautrock (Cluster/Harmonia/Tangerine Dream).


The overall level of malevolence here is heard and insinuated more so than outright, as most of the horror is undeniably in the vocals, whereas with HNW/noise it tends to be the reverse. If your looking for things that tend to be heavy in atmosphere and composition you really can’t go wrong with SHP.


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