A great recent album from long running cult French seditionist Noise-terrorist Mormansk 150. Trying to pinpoint & disambiguate through discordant camouflage, the Mourmansk fixation/ideology seems to agitate amongst ultra anti-western, & combative anti-capitalist, with an entrenched execration for what could be, to use a cliché, referred to as “ the business & political classes” & the corporate sector, with what perhaps could be identified as extreme left-wing & anarchist contumacy & militant rejectionist ideals. I may well be off the exact mark, I hope not offending the protagonists for this observation, but loosely analysing through the opaque rind of endless distortions, grating harsh bludgeoning & mordant murk, they clearly contest from a similar sub-current.
Emerging I think in the mid 90’s, the M150 rancour was initially performed by an apoplectic loner & dealt incomparably harsh Stridor or intense neuralgic Distress & destructive Electronics with perspicuous Industrial influences & aspects. The entity later became marginally less barbaric & less assaulting with the direct, meta-harsh maiming & manhandling that was previously so focal, & started shifting more into the Power Electronics spectrum, still quite willing to resort to the hitherto harsh offending & barbarism on accession. Somewhere around 2007 a second Strentorian was conscripted as a permanent member & the unit now operates as a duo.
Having followed Mourmansk for some time I have to confess that a lot of the recent rioting has left me disappointed, merging with the massive tide of standard Power Electronics homogeny. However, Yes We Conflict really astonished & surprised me & I think is one of Mourmansk’s greatest moments & a real vertex opus within the orbit.
It is profoundly varied. It would seem a colossal volume of equipment & formation strategies has been employed with what I suspect is diligent deliberation for diversity & variegation. Many breeds of discordance, from horrendously harsh skin-peeling, slow dissolving acid, & frankly awful fucking frequencies of appallingly unnerving & unpleasant Distress & acute consternation are utilized. Searing beams, burning rays of dreadful asperity, nasty low-end frequencies spilling ominous outrage & making the skin crawl. There are so many significantly differing modes/styles of noise/dissonance/distortion with pitches, textures & construct straying massively from one track to the next. I seldom hear this many details & alterations expanding on a noise album, which so often seem to elect variations on one frequency. The vocals are majorly mutated with FX &/or distortions, rarely are the words really legible, which is a shame as Mourmansk material can boast punctiliously researched subject matter & critique (mostly of modern conflicts & what I have heard them refer to as “the corrigendum”, or modern occidental power nexus). Four other groups/artists collaborate with individual contributions with some very strong results (particularly on “grave” with Anemone Tube). Samples of course skulk within the damaged tissues & formations /chronology lurch between free-fall & Stratiform with loops & ragged cacophonic rhythms.
Pretty much everything on the album is of exceptional quality & you can spectate from start to finish quite easily in one elaborate & extensive nightmare piece. The last four tracks, christened – “France’s Atrocious Geopolitical Medalling’s” have a particularly vicious lock-jaw to abscise any retained limbs.
Very impressive stuff if you can handle such grotesque & negative immersion.
Surprisingly the album has been issued on an Israeli label, which seems unexpected from Mourmansk considering their scrutiny & castigation on modern conflicts & tyranny.
A reflection of the ridiculously ailing nadir we are currently inhabiting…OUCH!!!
Label: Topeth
Rekd-? (post 2010 sometime)