Bong-Ra - Black Noise

Angry Metal Guy

When I reviewed Bong-Ra’s last album, Meditations, I commented on the about-turn the project made moving into doom. I should have known that the individual behind Bong-Ra, Jason Köhnen, likes to keep the listener guessing. So it is that Black Noise, their ninth official full-length, sees yet another mutation. In a whiplash change, Meditations’ successor is not dreamy, sax-infused, instrumental doom, but uncanny blackened, industrial, electronic metal; synthetic elements are used now to splice in unsettling samples and twist the guitar sound rather than dominate the melodies. The breakcore of yesteryears is back but bent to the whims of the metallic. If last time around, I intimated a desire to partake in whatever mind-altering substances Bong-Ra’s music lent itself to, this time, I’m not so sure. Not because Black Noise isn’t good, but because it is perturbing in the kind of way that doesn’t mix well with intoxication.

Black Noise takes its name from the conceptual opposite of white noise.¹ That is, rather than an equal distribution of audible frequencies, a jarring disparity and unevenness in tone, pitch, and frequency. The music is not nearly as inaccessible as that implies. Though the sensibilities of extreme metal can be found in its densest polyrhythms (“Dystopic”) and heaviest guitar and harsh vocal assaults (“Black Rainbow”), Bong-Ra maintains at least the semblance of groove, and the heavily muted tone of the electronically distorted riffs keeps them from being the brutal battering rams they might be if employed under a less cloaked master (“Death #2,” “Nothing Virus,” “Ruins”). This being said, Black Noise’s idiosyncratic merging of real and synthetic instrumentation; of the straightforward aggression of the metal elements and the no less unfriendly electronic ones remains oblique and challenging to all but the .1% of the music-listening population that haunts these quiet corners of the internet. Imagine a snappier, heavier Perturbator in vibe, with a sprinkling of Dødheimsgard audacity, and deathened vocals whose referent is harder to place. It’s an effectively alien experience and a disturbing one to boot.

Black Noise by Bong-Ra

The contents of Black Noise are about as weird and creepy as its cover art. Bong-Ra’s melodic themes are sparse and tend towards the dissonant and eerie, which maintains a constant unease. Köhnen affects a blunt annunciation that tends towards the callous when performing spoken word (“Death #2,” “Parasites”), and which remains just as articulate and dry as he slides into growls (“Dystopic,” “Nothing Virus”) giving the words a chilling inhumanity. The breakcore influence of clattering, tapping, metallic clanging, jangling, and whirring scattered across tracks makes everything that much more discomfiting (especially: “Dystopic,” “Useless Eaters,” “Bloodclot”). Samples—the most lengthy being that of Charles Manson defending his ‘philosophy’ which dominates “Useless Eaters”—bring the vague horror, and nihilistic mean-spiritedness haunting the compositions to the fore. And yet, Black Noise is surprisingly easy to listen to, in spite of its strangeness, in a strangely involuntary way. Bong-Ra execute polarised sides of the album’s sound with equal conviction and ease, and in all cases, perpetuate the same dark ambient aura. As a result, on paper odd inter-song neighbors, or intra-song bedmates convince the listener of their necessity without issue, and interplay becomes that much more compelling. A stomping industrial metal (“Death #2,” “Ruins”) or techno (“Useless Eaters”) groove; the warm buzzing of tremolos (“Dystopic,” “Blissful Ignorance”); the skittering and sharp breakcore (“Parasites”), and the complementarily soft blankets of noise (“Bloodclot”). The chaos of all the above just melts together into one self-consistent fever dream.

Black Noise effectively communicates dysphoria and anxiety, and its hybrid electronica-metal is satisfyingly menacing, and at times, plain cool. But there’s the insidious sensation, dampened only slightly by this slickness, that it lacks some definitive quality that would make its communications legitimately confrontational. Some decisive pizzazz or inexorability which would silence the thought of “so what?” does appear in the face of Black Noise’s noisy articulations. Exacerbating this is the fact that the record also begins to peter out in its second half, the sinister instrumental “Bloodclot” representing the turning point. Only the novelty and decidedly dark aura of these compositions keep their listener hooked just enough to follow their trajectory.

Once the surprise and intrigue of Bong-Ra’s new direction has settled, Black Noise has much to offer its acolytes. Though lacking the sticking power and ultimacy of the truly affecting, there is no denying its uniqueness and style. Reflecting sufficient existential affliction to get under your skin for at least a moment, and packing some stylish fusions of variously dense musical flavors, Black Noise is worth experiencing.

Rating: Good
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Debemur Morti Records
Websites: Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: February 21st, 2024

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