I like Meat Beat Manifesto. I respect Merzbow. I was hopeful going into this, but once I pressed play I realized what I signed up for. I should have known this would be more sound-focused than song-focused because the first track is over twenty minutes long. The noise wrestles against the beats for dominance, putting them at the more extreme edge of industrial music. Five minutes in I began to have my doubts, aside from the layers of distortion shifting there is no real change until ten minutes in when the noise begins to win out, though the beat is maintaining a steady drone. The feedback ebbs a little to give the programmed drum tracks room to breathe at times.
Playing this at high volumes would surely cause hearing loss, and has the finesse of sitting in the laundromat and listening to the dryers churn. 15 minutes in is when the first real shift occurs that feels like something that might be referred to as a song. It shifts its spin cycle in the levels of pummelling which is the most modulation we find til the end of the track. "Burner" is even more abrasive at its onset. Nothing happens aside from the droning sonic torture until ten minutes in, Then it sort of breaks down a bit into something that sounds like electric cars catching on fire from salt water.
The third track of this album that would be single if things did not drone on for so long is the radio edit of the first song which trims things down to a more manageable not quite five minutes, that is not as abrasive as the first track, Still, you could not put this on at a club and not close the place down. I will give this a 6, I would prefer a new Meat Beat Manifesto album not this experiment in performance art.
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