Mixturizer — Siete Patologias
The lovely title of this CD ("Siete Patologias" - which means "Seven Pathologies") reminded me of Carcass-style death grind, but what we have here is pure and simple harsh noise.Mixturizer's noise assault is as straight and stripped down as it comes. Contact microphone and distortion are obviously the main instruments, seemingly paired by digital effects. While some tracks consist of pure metal bashing and microphone feedback, others offer less variation and feel closer to harsh noise wall. You get big chunks of crunchy static interrupted and paired by the usual array of screeches and junk metal bashing, mangled vocal samples drowned in distortion, junk metal being hurled around, high-pitch ear drilling torture. All in the name of the pure joy of making a lot of racket. A special mention goes to track number six ("VI"), with its great use of looping and stop-and-go harsh noise blasts in old school Japanese fashion. Overall "Siete Patologias" is a good mix of sounds and it definitely shows Mr. Mixturizer's love for harsh noise. The more overly digital tracks maybe feature too much reverb but of course it's a matter of personal taste. All the seven tracks of this album are pretty lengthy, and while the length per se doesn't bug me, I think that a careful selection of the best bits would have been better. In fact "Siete Patologias" has some classic harsh noise moments but they're a little lost in a sea of "ok" noise. The booklet is very nice, as you can't go wrong with weird black and white sexual/industrial/bloody collages, but I didn't like the fact that you have to rip a sticker to get the CD out of the folder.
In conclusion "Siete Patologias" is a fairly good harsh noise album. I don't recall any other Spanish harsh noise act being released on CD ina big edition of 500 copies, so this might be a good chance to support the scene there.