Band: Bajskorv

Album: Irsch Tomb Ich

Year: 2006

Label: self released

Genre(s): Noise, Experimental, Post-Industrial

Website: http://bajskorv.noisenobodys.com/

Rating: 10/10

tracklist:

1. Dog Le Mudo

2. Vent Ocna

3. Int Frocmai

4. End Ona

5. Non Vivant

6. Berk Zeprp Opta Gyma

7. Rakt Roftef

8. mant Dedsil

9. Irsch Tomb Ich

10. I2I

11. Hate Radio

12. Redemption

13. Espirato

            When I initially discovered Bajskorv, which apparently translates to “shit sausage”, I had read that their sound was something derived from power noise coupled with old school industrial with perhaps a hint of contemporary ebm. Quite to my surprise, their latest album Irsch Tomb Ich is about as removed from the dancefloor as one could possibly get. When downloading this album (album has been released in hardcopy since), I had little idea that my head was about to be ripped off, deconstructed and thrust into realms beyond the tiny human understanding of ‘chaos’, only to be reconstructed through some twisted bazaar of noises pulled seemingly from beyond the tri-dimensional realms of men, and at last smashed back onto my torso with the force of a meteor shower.

            The album sounds like the wretched offspring of Merzbow thrown into an industrial-strength blender with Too Dark Park-era Skinny Puppy and the result sprinkled with bits of Download being sucked into a black hole. The thirteen tracks presented on Irsch Tomb Ich are a very challenging and provoking blend of dynamic noisescapes which move along like the sludge through the sewers of the nations capital; haunted and haunting vocals eminate from somewhere deep in the centre sphere of the tracks, pulsating outward, desperately trying to break through the  uncompromising wall of noise. Honestly I’ve heard a lot of bands try to emulate Skinny Puppy’s cevin and ogre, and I’d have to say this band does the best job I’ve heard in a long time (the sounds on this album exist in a place far beyond simple emulation). The vocals sound genuinely tortured and haunted (this album could be the too dark park of 2006), and are painted flawlessly into the music. Simply put: Dynamic as fuck. I haven’t heard this level of innovative vocals in noise music…ever, and it is incredibly rare in any other genre. Sporadic chunks of drum hits and acid synth loops find their way in there somewhere; Bajskorv does an amazing job of personifying the festering wastelands beneath our nation’s capital…this album brings to mind repeated images of sewers and filth. There is such a level of true rawness to the entire offering, such a pure fetid chaotic plan evolved. Despite the high levels of noise and sheer chaotic soundscape, the beautifully evocative melodic sections are the mortar that keeps this piece together. Despite the fact that it feels like everything in the universe is breaking apart, these melodic riffs are the tiny fibers keeping the fragments in stasis.

            All in all, it is a very challenging listen. This is the purest level of deconstruction of industrial music, ampliforming and contorting it a level of absolute destruction and turmoil never before heard. On some level one could claim this is noise, but it goes beyond the offerings of the “noise” genre on so many levels. It takes an incredible and almost unheard of level of artistry and spirit to (successfully) destroy an entire genre of music only to piece it back together as such a colossal mechanical incantation such as this, and Bajskorv has done it like no one out there has done or will do.

The bottom line is this: If you are bored by industrial music, get this fucking album. If you are bored by noise music, get this fucking album. This album embodies the chaotic flux trapped/trapping (in the) human soul. This album is a huge fucking tank shell to the wall that encases the current mentality behind contemporary industrial music. This could be the most powerful album in post-industrial music since…well…ever.

-november 2006    by [.d4n b4rr3tt.]