Can’t argue with the album title but what of the band? We are told that Naxal Protocol is the new name from previously defunct power noise artists Cazzodio. You can kind of understand why after they took a break for whatever reason that they chose to change their name, after all Italy is highly Catholic and calling yourselves ‘fucking god’ is going to draw all the wrong attention and hardly help increase record sales. Having said that this is a form of music that won’t appeal to all but a niche few but I am somewhat waffling having never heard of Cazzodio and due to lack of any further information, so it’s probably easiest to skip on and describe the actual music itself.
Unless you put this on at deafening volume a lot of this is kind of mellow and soothing. The static white noise, clanks, squalls, low frequency modulations and bleeps, pulses and swooshes (yep lots happening) on opener Naxal In The Air Tonight wash over me. Perhaps others may feel the opposite and want to jump out the nearest window but I zone in on them. A lot of this sort of music makes me think it would be ideal listening if for whatever reason you needed to cut up a dead body and were not in the mood for classical. It’s the perfect accompaniment for getting through those tough bits of gristle and bone. There are 10 tracks with equally strangely, obtuse and bewildering titles to traverse through here and the album plays out over a good hours running time. That may sound like a lot but I found that it kind of goes by rather quickly, perhaps that is just as I am trancing out through it all though. There are many different textures like the sproinging (and that’s the best word) bounce of the spiky multi-angled and pointy sounds on ‘Cosmonaut Cunnilingus’ which doesn’t so much as head into space but gives a new twist on actually giving head in space (sorry). Be warned though this practice does hit some higher more piercing frequencies.
Naturally there are no vocals as such on the whole and atmospheric samples are left to dwell in the ether like ghosts trying to come through from another dimension. This can be particularly effective and equally chilling as things come through in bursts as if on an out of tune looped radio transmission talking about human rights, removing foreign nationals and Nazi Germany as on the Whitehousian sounding ‘May You Rot In Hell.’ Moving into industrial realms there is the clash of steel and machinery running perhaps a bit amok and ‘Shanghai Cocaine Nights’ gives the impression of a city stewing under a meltdown of mania, overcrowding and hedonism. The SPK sounding hammer clank continues over into ‘The Fear Of An Infection As An Infection Of Fear.’ Perhaps there is some meaning and the hammer sounds are like the heart pounding as the fear takes grip or maybe as infection spreads in some sort of Cronebergian twisted dystopian virulent nightmare. Then again perhaps it’s just the imagination running wild and I’m reading far too much into this. Some screamed harsh and contorted vocals invade over slow gabba beats on ‘Tied Down.’ I read somewhere that The Vomit Arsonist is involved on one track so guessing it could be this and these parts add a real hatred to any of the calming textures I was talking about before.
We go into plate shifting, seismic deconstruction on the ten minute ‘The Permanent Delirium Of The Reactionary Mind.’ Voices talk about God and creation but it sounds like the world is being taken apart piece by piece here; why do I find this so calming? Laser beam sounding pulses fly around like they are being fired out by some interstellar wrecking crew and the mangled sound of steel folding in on itself coruscates. I’m more than tempted to grab a towel and some peanuts and try and hitch a lift out of here!
It was by pure luck that I ended up being able to really get into this and listen to it properly as another writer who had been given it asked for a pass card allowing me to soak up this somewhat fascinating journey through all sorts of dimensions and sound zones. Furthering controversy it gets a high mark as I found Naxal Protocol to be a real change from the normal and the album an incredibly involving listen on so many listens.
(8/10 Pete Woods)
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