Obscene Noise Korporation — Primitive Terror Action/The Rape of the Blue Plane
Primitive Terror Action (CD1) is a 21 track behemoth of an album, starting with the track Noise Terror you are pummelled immediately and from this point forward there is no turning back. Rather than great long tracks these are short, seven minutes max, “pop” songs of Noise. Punchy, to the point and thrilling. “Breakfast At Wests” is a wind tunnel of eerie and desolate noises that just turn in on them selves perpetuating the spiral of dystopian pain. These tracks form the begins of the original album, which even now sounds fresh.
There’s something about early – mid period industrial noise which I find so much more satisfying than that genres output now. Maybe it’s the rawness, or the intensity, or just the feeling that these people weren’t trying to breakdown barriers, they just wanted to make noise. Nowadays there seems to be more of an agenda. Or maybe this is my mid-life crisis and I hark back to a period of huge fascination and youthful enjoyment!
“Tears”, track 3 is a pulsating and beautifully short piece that sounds like someones dragging your head over a pylon repeatedly. “The Hauler” is a lugubrious droning squall of a track that precedes “Rosemarys Bedroom” a three minute wave of pink noise and terror – the sound of someone screaming in your ear for three minutes without let up.
Moving onto the rare tracks, “One Happy Gravel Pit...” and “Suttee Barbeque” raise the frequency without raising the tension, you can understand why these pieces where left off the album/ used for compilations/or just not released. They are Ok but not stand out tracks. And the same can be said for the 9 demos – which sound incomplete. These are all excellent for the completist, but in fairness I feel they should have been given a disc to themselves, because they don’t add anything to the original eleven pieces and that’s a disappointment.
“The Rape OfThe Blue Planet” (CD2) is the last offering from ONK from 2013-14, and features vocal contributions from the J Stillings of Steel Hook Prosthesis. This second CD is 8 tracks and starts so subtley with “Störning-StörungsGEHALT Z141ÖU” it’s mesmeric. You are drawn ever so slowly into a far off wall of noise and vocal screeches that you are almost unaware of this until it’s too late. By that time you’re stuck with no escape.
By “Fold Out Long Play Machine War” you are being treated to a skittish dancing utter lunatic of a track that shouldn’t work. It’s off kilter beat and giggling bass should not work, but there is a level of intensity here in the wall of noise that over comes these possible flaws to whip up a really tense driven piece of music.
And then comes “Walter And The Turtle Riding Gospel Preacher”. And with a title like that I’m expecting a Nurse With Wound foray into dadaism and the avant garde, not a slow march towards a steam train of a track with almost indistinguishable reversed vocals in the background, and a feedback drifting across the track.
Following this is the mammoth (by ONK standards) fourteen minute track “Hjärntvätteriet”. The now ever present vocals are here with the rumblings of a factory under siege mixing perfectly with them before the assault of noise hits you around the 5 minute mark and you are slammed against the wall and brutally physically assaulted – all for fun, you understand!
“Filthsång (Sergej)” a heady mix of marching music, vocals and babbling noise actually give this a lo-fi early 80’s industrial feel, where toying with the far right end of military imagery was still considered risque. The “untitled” track that completes this album is almost ambient by comparison to the rest of this Double cd set ,but it completes the set like a post-coital cigarette.
Collectively, you can expect nothing but the rawest and most primitive of sounds and analogue terror from ONK. This is strictly saturated frequencies and pulsating chunks of distortion drenched monstrosities. It’s Swedish, it’s industrial, it’s stripped down and downright ugly, but by god it’s beautiful. If only those demo tracks weren’t on it this would be perfect.