Flesh Coffin — The Beast Won't Go To Sleep

I think Andreas Brandal is one of the most under-rated noise musicians working today. He has been recording stuff now for a long time, and he has released a very wide range of different material- from straight out harsh noise, HNW, onto delicate ambient, and drone while remaining somewhat a hidden treasure in the vast sea of noise. With "The Beast Won't Go To Sleep" from  his Flesh Coffin project he’s reached one of its peaks.

The four, eerily titled ("The Beast Won't Go To Sleep", "That's A Funeral In The Mirror", "In The Covens Of The Witch", and "The Mess That Scalpels Make") tracks presented here are a good glimpse at the various styles of Brandal's music. Extremely crude and free distorted junk metal mayhem that suddenly becomes obsessive looping, lurking synths and primitive industrial crunch/grinding machine sounds, all mixed with careful and skillful composition. The composition is indeed one of the best qualities of this tape: as each "moment" is perfectly planned and placed and all the pieces are coherent, proper, and legitimate in their song structure…..unfortunately (?) this is not  very common thing in harsh noise, and I love when it happens.

The murky and raw kind of distortion and the slow, sluggish pace of the junk manipulation omnipresent in the tape create a creepy/lurking/industrial atmosphere as opposite to the classic and super fast harsh noise destruction of the japanese and american masters of the genre. Brandal's metal loops are some of the best I’ve heard since K2 work, and in fact they're so good that I think he could aspire to the title of ‘Norway's king of junk metal noise’!.  Special honorable mention  must go to the great grinder sound used on side B- it's Simple, brilliant and very effective.

"The Beast Won't Go To Sleep" is one of Flesh Coffin's best releases and certainly one of Andreas Brandal's most successful efforts. In conclusion: if you like noise just fucking get this tape!