Cutlery Hits China: English for the Hearing Impaired

I have come across two of the guys in this band before: Maor Appelbaum and Rani Zager have a Whitehouse-styled noise power electronics project Poochlatz whose "Victims of Self-Preservation" album I've heard so when I found out about this threesome via the Aquarius Records website www.aquariusrecords.org, I guessed this album could be something close to being noisy and a bit industrial metal. Well, I wasn't far wrong but I wasn't quite right either: there's a very strong doom metal influence in the long bass gutar riffs and the slow natural drumming beats and rhythms - in fact, the doom metal influence is dominant over the noise and industrial stuff which is quite a surprise (for me anyway).

There are five tracks with titles derived from movies: "Donnie Darko", "Straw Dogs", "The Descent", "Scum" and "The Devil's Rejects" may be familiar to most people and give you some idea of the band member's interests and obsessions. Ponderous, usually monotonous rhythms and beats form the backbone on all tracks, even the last one "Scum" where it is very faint. "Donnie Darko" is a straightforward doomy song with rough distorted vocals from Zager and not much in the way of tricked-up noise effects apart from some metal clanging later in the track which could be mistaken for percussion. Fancy treatments of Zager's vocals (constant tape looping to create a circular hellish spiralling / suffocating atmospheric effect of his voice) mark the appropriately titled "The Descent"; these are reinforced by the tribal drumming that appears later druing the track. With "Straw Dogs" we get further distortions of Zager's vocals so sometimes they go very high or very low. Interestingly there is not a great deal of purely instrumental music in the first half of the CD and it's not until we reach "Straw Dogs" that sections without Zager's voice start to appear, in the form of long drones.

On "The Devil's Rejects" we get an even balance of foot-dragging sludge metal rhythms and droning metal noise while Zager rants on and on in what might be close to his normal speaking voice. It's a relentless song in the way it builds up and plods along but it never becomes chaotic; the chaos is saved for "Scum" where faint drumming just barely holds together truckloads of screechy and demented noise samples, towers of guitar feedback and all three members of the band totally apeshit with long high-pitched screams and tribal chanting in the background.

This is a really hard-hitting album with powerful driving rhythms so you might need a pallet of headache tablets to help you get through this recording. The album is song-based and the rhythms anchor the music so it's less chaotic than most purely noise electronic records. Only Zager's vocals could be considered in-yer-face aggressive. The overall sound is actually very clear and sharp and you can hear the lyrics very clearly on "The Devil's Rejects" at least. Possibly the sound could have had a raw edge to it but that's being nit-picky on my part.

If you're keen on current noisy electronics bands like Wolf Eyes, Hair Police, Mammal and their fellow Michigan-based noise-makers, you may be interested in checking out this album. More traditionally-minded doom metal fans might find the substitution of samples for actual guitars confusing and would query whether this music should indeed be called doom metal but the doomy rhythms are there on all tracks, even "Scum" has a doom rhythm submerged under all those clouds of noise chaos.

After hearing this album and getting accustomed to it, you're likely to find classic noise power electronics band Whitehouse, even with the African drums and the screaming and haranguing, a bit on the sedate and quiet side.