Flesh Coffin — So Much Darkness
This C40 claims to offer up four tracks in all, but sadly something has gone very much a miss with this release regards it's tracks & their timings. The track timings don’t seem to relate to the ones on the sleeve, but from what I can make out there are two tracks per side.
Opening up the tape we have “Preparation” which comes in just over the 13 minute mark. The track starts out with this neat textural cluttering and almost liquid trickling elements- these are fed through this unreeling and blurring tape effect which makes you panic thinking your player is ruining the tape. After a few minutes of this we move into creepy & stripped junk cluttering dwells that sudden rise up to huge banks of junk cluttering & horror wind ripped noise attacks. Nearing the mid-way point Brandal adds in a malevolent and sinister tone that switchers between feed back pitch attacks and wavering black harmonics. In the tracks last four of so minutes the junk elements and the up/ down textured shifts are replaced by a more even and cinematically dammed mix of growing/ receding rumbling and brooding metallic dwells and creepy ‘n’ crackling subtle noise texturing.
Up next is “Dress My Wounds” which comes in at just over the 6 minute mark( though is meant to coming in at 7.52). And this track often violently see-saws between buried and rising bone like junk metal abuse, murky and blown-out textural shifts, manic junk metal texturing, and roaring yet organic noise shreds.
Side two seemingly has two tracks to offer “Grindstone” which is around the five mintue mark and starts out with a more sharp and high pitched take on the unreeling tape tones like the first sides first track then darts off into high pitch judder sustains that are mixed with crashing & battering noise rolls, with the odd dips into murky and stripped junk metal attacks here & there.
Lastly we have the title track which takes up the rest of the side and finds Brandal darting from caustic texture bombardments, to wavering electro dwells, to stripped junk sinister dwells, onto brooding noise folks, through to long dwells in brooding and crashing eerier harmonic fired noise matter. The tracks a great example of the projects mixed use of sounds/ textures & it’s damn violent & chilling too.
Sonically “So Much Darkness” is prime and darkly enjoyable Flesh coffin, but sadly the presentation of the sleeve leaves much to be desired and does let the release down- first off(as already mentioned) the track timing are often way out, and secondly the sleeve is badly cut and folded, which makes the whole thing look very amateurish and lo-grade. So a difficult item to rate….but I say 4 out of five for the sonics, and 1 for the sleeve.