This quartet from The Netherlands has been around for 12 years exploring the boundaries of dark and cold music. “The Prime Mover” is advertised as “a stunning mixture of extravagant post black metal and industrial landscapes, a challenging journey to yet unexplored emotional feelings”.
The music is bleak, black but not as mechanical as I expected. This is the world of industrial processes. The delivery reminded me uncannily of Dark Fortress. From the post-industrial setting of “New Replicators”, “Transporter” is more in the zone of mixed-up experimentalism. In fact there are no norms here. If the delivery is that of Dark Fortress, the ambiance is of Aborym, The Axis of Perdition, Minethorn, Anaal Nathrakh and a bit of Blut aus Nord. It’s all unpleasant and discomforting but it’s meant to be so. Throbbing industrial sounds cover a quietly menacing background on “Continuous Data Part I”. The sludginess portrays a grim struggle. This computerised world is played out in difficult patterns, suggesting hard work and drudgery. Is all their work like this? The title of their previous album “Terminal World Perspective” suggests this is probably the case. This world consists of razor-sharp guitar rhythms, a drum which is signalling war and dark mutterings about “never-ending sequences”. In fact I was half expecting that chilling line from Mayhem’s “View from Nihil”: “For everything I experience around me is cold and dead”. This part ends with the sound of people dying. Part II is even more avant-garde and enigmatic. Fluttering keyboards and irregular guitar patterns dominate the production. For that’s what it sounds like: a production process, except that the machine has gone wrong. It all suggests a horrible place to be, but on an artistic level I’m not sure what’s new or stimulating about this. The trouble is that I know where we are. Apocalyptic as this is, you couldn’t use this for a film set, not that CHD may want to, of course. As mobile as the music is, there’s no sense of movement. It’s like a static scene. A cry is heard in the background, but there’s no impact. “Shapeshifting” starts with a sinister heartbeat. A motor cranks up. There is a ghostly song. It is a ghastly song. A disharmonious chorus interrupts the harsh and nightmarish output that’s going on at the shop front. It’s creepy, eerie and violent, especially in the drumming department. Again it keeps you on your toes but it doesn’t mean that I like it. Slow and gruesome progress, more morbid utterances and images of suffering characterise the last two tracks but it wasn’t grabbing me.
I suppose that on one level this headache material is interesting in its experimental and apocalyptic way but haven’t we heard it before in other forms? I can think of works by Dark Fortress and others where the experience is like having maggots crawl down my skin or being sucked into a hole. It doesn’t happen here. I don’t expect green shoots or moments of enlightenment as this clearly isn’t what “The Prime Mover” is about, but this seemed to difficulty for the sake of difficulty. I looked on with indifference.
(5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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