Black leather Jesus — Vastgebonden
Along with Werewolf Jerusalem Black leather Jesus is one of the most known & prolific of Ramirez’s many, many projects. BLJ was originally formed back in 1989, and has had rotating line-up ever since that has at points had up to 13 members connected to the project- Ramirez has been the only constant member through-out the projects existence.
At present the line-up stands as: Richard Ramirez, Sean E. Matzus(Last Rape, In The Land Of Archers, [Untitled], TheWhitehorse), Austin Cooley(Concrete Violin, Painful Vigil), Leeann Rogers(Hierchiss), Carol Sandin(Painful Vigil), Joseph Gates(Vargrwulf, Zionist, R.S.P.), Nathan & Randa(Ascites & Godless Girl), Robert Newsome(White Gimp Mask, Four Flies, The Girl In The Wooden Horse Torture), Scott Houston(Respirator & S.P.I.T.) Thomas Mortigan(RU-486), Vanessa(R.S.P., Viking Movement, L'Exorcisme), and Vance Osborne(Priest in Shit, In the Land of Archers). Whether all 13 members listed above are playing on “Vastgebonden” is unclear, as there’s no mention on the sleeve or discogs whose taking part in this track.
BLJ sound is best described as a often dense yet shifting mixture of harsh noise, extreme industrial texturing, HNW, and all manner of noised-up & perverse matter. Subject wise BLJ focus in on gay S&M, gay bondage, and genreal sleazed/ painful gay themes. Vastgebonden is the Dutch word for Bounding or restraining by one or more with ropes, cords, strings, or the like.
The single self titled track on offer here comes in at just over the twenty one minute mark. The track starts out with a rumbling & taunt wall of steel battering type noise that has a nice sleazy under current running through it. But pretty soon caustic shoots of noise are fed into the mix and these take in seared spirallings, white hot scrubbings, hissing and more layers of steel sheet like abuse.
The collective cleverly layer ‘n’ shift the noise textures here so the original rumbling ‘n’ battering sleazed wall can still be heard, yet there’s a real feeling of movement & shift here, but things never become too crowded or over-full with BLJ adding or shifting one rewarding noise texture or another into the mass of sleazed, brutal yet controlled sound. By around the mid-way point things are getting very dense & muilt-layered with more seared, sharper & higher pitched junk metal like forks been added to the mix, along with scrubbing ’n’ feasting static tonality, and these are all underfeed by brooding yet brutal metal drags & white noise churns. Really there’s so many great twist ‘n’ turns with in this track I could go on & on describing them forever.
All told this track is a great, brutal & sleazed boiling mixture of harsh noise & seared/white hot industrial noise with junk metal elements & HNW dwells. This is certainly one of the highlights of this great series, and a wonderfully seared yet sleazed end to the series. Keep you eyes on Bored Bears Recordings website as the whole series of 12 Richard Ramirez releases are going to reissued on a ltd 4 disc CDR set.