Silence is not what we get from Rorcal, whose world is heaviness, dissonance and industrially haunting soundscapes. 17 years on from forming, this is the Swiss band’s sixth album release.
Crumbly destruction stands at the centre of the opener “Early Mourning”. Heavy, loud and reverberating, the intent is as clear as the sound is menacing. So “Childhood is a Knife in the Throat” is not such an unexpected title. This is more industrial in the fashion of Anaal Nathrakh with vibes of Cult of Luna. What is most striking is the mercilessly heavy assault. Its heaviness slapped on heaviness, not forgetting the instrumental violence and angst-driven screaming of the vocalist. We’re occasional sent down an alley of melancholy but it’s a blind one as this seems to be more about overwhelming force than anything else. The chaotic turbulence is momentarily broken up with a distant industrial drone and chasmic sounds, and so “Childhood is a Knife in the Throat” ends. An explosion erupts like a tank bursting as we return to the familiar noise of “The Worst in Everything”. The mood shifts.
“Extinguished Innocence” now hits us with a slower slab of heaviness. The sound is unremittingly immense. This is like the sky clouding over and being covered with a swinging lead weight. Rorcal hand out a pounding. The sound expands but it is no less uncompromising. The expansion takes us into a vision of apocalyptic horror. I wouldn’t have expected anything cheery from “Hope is a Cancer” and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s just another step in the unrelenting wall of sound that this album represents. It’s strange perhaps to assign the word cliché to this, but the track title “Constant Void” points in this direction. It is at least accurate, and in amongst the screams and brutal noise, there is a backing layer, before it eventually breaks down and pounds away in a ball of sludgy fury. But where Cult of Luna, by way of example, convey an image and sense of direction, this world is eternally black and heavy, which is fine for some of course. After the quick blast of firepower “Under the Nails”, the aptly titled “No Alleviation, Even in Death” finishes the job off. The start replicates the sound of industrial process. The following section is bleak and heavy, so the final few minutes is spent hammering us into the ground, which actually is how it’s been for 40 odd minutes.
Listening to this album deadened my senses. For some, and maybe the band, this might be seen as an achievement. Whilst I could see that musically speaking, this was more than an unrelenting wall of noise, I just became immune to it in the way that I would have if I had been listening to everyday sounds or even silence. I’m sure that the album “Silence” was supposed to have a profound effect on me, but whilst I didn’t mind it, it made very little impression owing to its monolithic development.
(5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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