Labels: Moganono – Obscurist
Review by: Steven J Carlin
This purchase was based on Admiral Andy saying this was music for peeps like my esteemed colleagues Dellermari and Kunaligator, so knowing that their taste is broad reaching, varied and impeccably heavy I was all over this piece of wax. It arrived and it is quite a surprising looking record, heavy card sleeve with pictures of children on the front praying, which according to one of my colleagues in the office saying “that looks pure 80s as fuck, man.” He didn’t have much more to say but he hit the nail on the head. The insert is simple, a moody picture of the bad assed fuckers known as Chip and Lee and the lyrics are the reverse. It should be noted that one looks like our emo bastard of a leader and the other looks like the UK’s greatest promoter and all round punk rock good guy Danny! Given that those two listen to crappy hippy music I couldn’t imagine this racket ever being the product of those two wimps! Without dropping the needle the lyrics read as bleak and desperate, there is a sense of destruction conveyed without any hope for rebuilding. Just my cup of tea at the moment…
The knelling of the bells is the mark of the Body’s arrival, Pounding out the intro, very simple start, getting more complex, a slowed down and drugged out sample… Then the groove kicks in and it is fucking on like donkey kong. The heading is nodding along and then some hellish, tortured yell comes in… Not over the top of the music, but as part of the music. It is quiet as fuck and could even be put down to be the voices in your head rather than on the record. It is only when it breaks down a bit do the vocals become a bit more distinct… But they are still buried you can’t make out a word, all you can take from it is the rage. So that is us just through the first half of the first side. Fuck.
Genius and brilliance are so close to frustration and disappointment they should re-jig the dictionary to suit. If something comes out the blue and amazes right off the bat it is the most trivial detail that can lead to an opinion crashing and burning into bitterness and a feeling of being let down. The one thing is that the end of the 5th track, which comes at the end of side one, just cuts out. No warning, no sort of ending… Just mid rock it stops. Intended or error? I dunno, first couple of listens it really fucking annoyed me. Especially when the second side doesn’t really kick off in the same manner which the first ended. But that is just nit picking on my part, the second half has two longer numbers that take the mood down another notch. Fuck yeah.
This is too long a review already, here is why… I am confused and distracted by this record; I spend more time thinking about it than I really should. I don’t even know why, what is with thinking about a record when you are not even playing it? I really do wonder about myself sometimes but that is not here nor there. The overriding feeling from this record is that it is not fair to write about it now, there is more to this than something like Rammer with its instant coke hit of metal mayhem or Corrupted with their promise of a needle full of dragged out brutality. The Body, with this desolate and grave record, give me the feeling that there is hope in this world. While there is a dark sense of the impending doom in life that we are all choosing to ignore; works of art like this make consumption of music worthwhile. This is not a simple slab of wax that will meet your average screamo’s desire for the darker side of life, from ashes rise or tragedy this is not.
So what if The Body don’t get the acclaim from all quarters that those bands do, so what if the Body don’t end up as poster boys for the hardcore scene, with this lp they have made a record that I know will hit the spot next week, next month or next year. I just realized the elite group this reminds me of, it is the cannon that includes the halo perfecto, sicarri and lickgoldensky. Of course that is not a musical grouping, but a buncha bands that don’t give a flying fuck for current trends and tastes and delivered raw and bullshit free rock that was most certainly beyond comparison with any contemporaries.
Timeless is a word that carries weight, ask me in five years if my take is the same, I bet every thing I own that it will be.
What a rambling and shitty review, just go to a good distro and buy this, its on Obscurist Press. Support them and this band.