This New York-based project works off noisy chaos, but so did Skinny Puppy. I am listening to hear how song-oriented this is going to be, which is going to be the make or break for this album. The opening track finds some dynamic within the abrasive battery of sound. At the three-minute mark, I am already wondering where are they going to take this for the last two and a half minutes of the song, so something right is being done here. "Grind Down" takes a minute to get started rather than the opening track which gets in your face from the beginning. It however is less cohesive as a song until the beat drops in around the two-minute mark. This beat is important because it keeps things from going too far in a noisy direction for me.
What separates them from being on Skinny Puppy's level is that Cevin Key and Oghr maintained a clearer narrative for the art they were making. Sure there is anger at society and how the system is set up. Is that enough to sustain an entire album? Heavy hammering certainly provides a distraction from contemplating this for too long. I get that this sub-genre of spastic sonics is called power electronics, but I expect good songs from every genre of music. There have not been any deal breakers so far and "Thaw" conforms more to my expectations of industrial music. Though eight and a half minutes is a lot of time to kill for this kind of Ministry-like stomp. Where it goes is into a swathe of ambient noise that collides with wannabe black metal,
"Under the Sod" comes back with a lo-fi industrial beat. This turns into something that is run through the filter of abrasion but still maintains direction as a song despite the storm of chaos surrounding it. I am halfway through the last song before I realize it's not still "Under the Sod" that has just gone in a noisy direction. So some of this finds uniformity in the wall of chaos. Or in other words, the songs sound the same. Nevertheless I will give this album an 8 , as I appreciate what they are trying to do here.
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