ATTN:Magazine
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I’m already numb by the end of the first hour. In fact, it’s no longer the noise that jolts me back to consciousness – it’s the silences and fade-outs that signal the transitions between tracks, lifting the foil blanket of feedback and distortion to let me take just one breath of fresh air before I’m smothered once again. Three hours is too long and that’s undoubtedly the point – ANIMAL is the embodiment of oblivion and excess, spilling over the edges of tolerance and sensibility and then continuing to gush out onto the floor. Once you’ve gone too far, why not go even further?
The album is split into three sections. There’s no clear atmospheric distinction between them, and I wonder if the division is trying to trick me into perceiving a thematic development where there is none; an optimistic glimmer of progression or variety amid the pitch black. The gush is too consistent to be cathartic – ANIMAL lacks the necessary convulsive push-pull to eject its own inherent toxicity – and instead, the album feels like an exercise in recycling putrid waste into more putrid waste; eating its own shit and then passing it again, trapped in a stagnant feedback loop of excretion and devourment, reduced to the very clichéd essence of harsh noise in the constant erosion of digestion. Utterly pointless. Thoroughly gratifying.
Fri May 27 00:00:00 GMT 2016