| SNAKES ALIVE/WIRE WEREWOLVES LP, 2009, SR #3 Edition of 100 SNAKES ALIVE 1. Author of Miseries 2. Overboard 3. One and a Half Stories 4. Mortega WIRE WEREWOLVES 1. Imprisoned By Moonlight (feat. Greh Holger) 2. Descent Into Decay 3. Amongst The Ruins of the Nameless City REVIEWS Along with the excellent Tsathoggua cassette that we received this week from Wire Werewolves, we also just got a bunch of copies of the brand new split LP from Wire Werewolves and their pals in Snakes Alive, packaged in a cool silkscreened sleeve and super limited, as usual. Where the Tsathoggua cassette captures Wire Werewolves at their most industrial sounding, here we get a heavy dose of the band in their fractured black metal/noise mode, which makes for an interesting contrast with the chunks of crushing hooky sludge that Snakes Alive carve out on the flipside. The Wire Werewolves side opens with a flurry of fluttering amplifier drones and charged synthesizer hum (courtesy of Hive Mind's Greh Holger) that builds in intensity as a skeletal slow-moving drumbeat enters alongside a dark minor key guitar melody, sounding very Slint-like for a moment before the distorted riffing and scathing shrieking vocals suddenly kick in, turning the creepy post-rock intro into a mangy black metal dirge. Then the band cranks up the aggression, the drums surging into sloppy thrashing blastbeats and a weird galloping riff as they alternate between primal blackened thrash and slower dirgier heaviness. The black metal comes to an abrupt halt whe they reach the second track, however; here, the group summons up a buzzing swarm of buzzing synths, heaving metallic scrape, deep bellowing vocals buried under miles of reverb, an ominous ambience seeping out from cracks in the earth that dissipates a few minutes later as the heavy guitars and drums and vocals kick back in with another lurching, chugging mid-paced black metal riff and machinegun blastbeats. The rest of the side moves back and forth between these two qualities, blending together segments of viscious black metal similiar to early Mayhem and the totally abstract industrial textures that drift at the edges of Wire Werewolve's blackened thrash, always eventually descending into corrosive metallic ambience. The mix of evil abstract ambience and feral BM is a potent one, and puts this recording from the WW team somewhere in between Mayhem at their most experimental and the noxious charred industrial sounds of Allegory Chapel Ltd. Then it's on to the Snakes Alive side. These guys were new to me when I picked this up, but their side kicked my ass with a sludgy, catchy brand of tectonic heaviness. Four songs, "Author of Miseries", "Overboard", "One and a Half Stories" and "Mortega", each a dour downtuned battery of frantic high pitched screams trading off with burly hardcore shouting over nasty Sabbathoid riffing that goes from beastly doom-boogie with triumphant dual guitar harmonies to chunky droning riffs that dig deep furrows through the earth and even some very cool blasts of faster punkier aggression mixed with discordant chords. Think Floor, Consular, Fistula, and yeah, Eyehategod too...these guys mine a similiar form of intense, hardcore-..informed slow-motion violence with an emphasis on low-end and noxious attitude, though Snakes Alive are way more "punk" sounding than any of those bands, with an undercurrent of post-hardcore and melody running through their songs that suggests that these cats have been listening to just as many SST and Touch And Go records as they've been jamming Eyehategod's Take As Needed For Pain and Floor's Dove. The record comes in a red and black silkscreened sleeve printed by the folks at Seizuer Palace, and is limited and hand numbered to only 100 copies. - CRUCIAL BLAST |