Sturmgeschütz — Lined-up
“Lined-up” is the first release from this project and it offers up one near on fifty minute track worth of truly brutal and painful HNW. The basic black ink on white paper sleeve features a picture of what looks like a long line of world war two prisoners lined-up against a wall getting ready to be shot in the back. Inside there’s a small inlay that features pictures of an assault rifle from some sort of gun manual- so really you know the sonics here are going to be extremely bleak and brutal.
The single forty eight minute track is entitled simply “shot”, and it starts off with the sound of a machine gun or assault rifle letting off a few rounds of fire for ten or so seconds. Then we’re straight into the ‘wall’ which is a mid-paced, deeply muffled and bass lined mixture of droning aircraft like judder and simple regimented skipping static tones. The pace and structure mainly remains locked around these two elements for the rest of the track; with here and there moments where the two tones blend into a stuck maelstrom of sound for a few seconds at a time. On the whole it’s a ‘ok’ example of bleak, stark and fairly tonally simple ‘wall-making’- though I did find my interest starting to wonder after the half-an-hour mark.
So in summing up “Lined-up” is a passable début release that does have a certain amount of bleak and nasty charm about it. I just hope they can manage to deepen and expand this unpleasant edge better on future releases.
