Well I’m glad the label sent the debut album by Piss Vortex on disc rather than a stream (get it). I still feel a bit guilty as this has not had a quick review and I keep on giving it a spin and picking my head up off the floor meaning to review it but… Well this is not the easiest of albums to listen to and digest and even come up with words to describe. It went out a couple of times on a reviews list and all our other writers politely ignored it no doubt realising that it was going to be somewhat of a challenge and did not want to find themselves being pissed on by such a musical deluge from a great height or otherwise. The release date drags nearer so fuelled up on coffee it is time to put pen to paper as it were and try and describe the sonic obliteration that these Danes are proffering on their debut self-titled release.
You have probably guessed by the name what sort of style this is going to be and if I told you the 14 track album lasts 24 minutes you will be all the clearer. The discordant, cephalic carnage is unleashed with riffs and drumming all over the shop on opener ‘Detrimetalist’ and explodes into a welter of abused and molested instrumentation that’s fiddled in all the wrong ways as the singer screams over the top like an ADHD kid having had his sweets taken off him. It’s noisy, obtuse, brash and headache inducing stuff and as I type along we already seem to have moved onto the third track and I’m not going to try and keep up with this in the slightest. Piss Vortex take in elements of grind and discore and don’t go for anything in way of linear song structure but just batter the listener over the head in as many ways as possible and in the quickest time they can get a knock-out punch in. Themes are briefly summed up in such titles as ‘Liar(s),’ ‘Beaten Womb,’ ‘Filth’ and ‘Shit Life’ so basically if you are looking for something to rage at you about all that is wrong in life then you are in the right place.
Although I love things that are extreme I have to admit this is not easy to get to grips with. When it slows to a grinding a grating crawl on the aforementioned ‘Liar(s)’ I feel myself taking a sigh of relief waiting for it to expand but have little time as it constricts and tightens back into a hate-filled stream of invective that unleashes its urinal storm all over you again. The juggernaut stop, start battery clangs and crunches away like a car crash and I guess some may find it completely cathartic and it’s guaranteed to have you killing anyone who remotely looks at you the wrong way whilst its playing. Listening to this on headphones in the street would not be advisable and it is much more of an endurance test than an enjoyable listen. Perhaps live this lot would hit the mark a bit more as at least you could run to the toilet (no doubt the perfect place to listen to it) and hoover up a line of ajax, vim or whatever your preferred brand of scouring powder is and go back and try and face it again before the set ends up in an all-out punch up. Nope even at 24 minutes I find this a bit too much for listening to in the ‘comfort’ of one’s home and it has me wanting to literally mark out my territory like a wild beast and piss all up the wall. Sorry, I won’t be playing it again in a hurry, even though the clocks go back an hour in the morning life’s too short.
(5/10 Pete Woods)
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