The Body & Krieg :" the Body & Krieg"

At first I was hesitant on this one because I thought it was a split rather than a collaborative effort  and the only split in my collection I've ever like is Converge's split with Agoraphobic Nosebleed . Even as a collaborative effort I'm more partial to Krieg than the Body, but then it's no secret I like black metal more than sludge. The opener "Bottom of the Bottle , Bottom of the River" lands somewhere between the two with an almost industrial pound that drones more like black metal over the feral vocal howls. The industrial elements do not end with the first song as an electronic beat winds up the darker turn this pairing takes on "Carved Out and Caved In". At around the four minute mark the song breaks down into screaming over white noise when plug gets pulled on the drum machine. It gets built back up into shambling sludge. 'Fracture" sounds like it was recorded through blown out speaker as it's a dirty throb of noise and screaming. More machine like in it's pacing it doesn't feel like industrial due to the chaos erupting at every angle. It ebbs out into cleaner guitar with vocals that sound like the death call of a rooster over it.

The blast into something closer to black metal on "Celebrate Your Shame".  This is similar to the first Corrections House album in that sense that yet again the song takes on a machine like stomp, but is not like Corrections House's second album as it doesn't commit enough to it to become actual industrial. There is a darker more narcotic throb to "Never Worth Your Name". I really like the synth melody in the background, so I try to block out the Eyehategod like vocals that seem to be screaming out of obligation rather than purpose.It begins to slowly build around the two minute mark. At the four minute mark the screaming takes over as the music descends into noise before coming back around. More chaos ensues before the doomy plod of "Gallows" kicks in. Here the noise is used more effectively than in places earlier in the album. Despite the change to the more 808 like beat and the sampled ranting " A Failure Worth Killing Yourself" sounds like an extension of the previous song, aside from the life support bleep in the back ground.

"The Final Nail" has more of a chugging drone to it that falls between their two worlds in a way that is the perfect song to close this sonic altar of madness with. The beat continues to fall on that robotic pound and the layered guitars have a ghost of melody that would not sound out of place on " the Downward Spiral". I am sure this is going to be on the best of the year lists of many a hipster douche pretending to like metal, this is not to take away from from the abrasive power it sometimes packs or the moments when it locks into a crazed darkness and everything falls into place. The vocals annoy me throughout this album, they rarely seem to be going with the flow of the music, so despite some of the nice twisted parts this gets a 7.