Stone Wired - Shadow Conscious
One of the latest Stone Wired releases has hit the street, released via No Labels Interested in a limited edition of 50 copies. A lovely blackened cardboard slipcase being wrapped around the very graphical design inside. Looking closely it reveals to bodies with the top of their heads is open, brains are visible... (I think). A cool looking tape for sure, with it´s A-side and B-side being filled up with 14 tracks! I will describe the 3 first tracks on each side, and will, in the end, give an overall review of this album.
Side A starts with Black Light, dark-ambient mood piece with paranormal post-Cold Meat Industry touches. The aesthetic is right in the eye, and the sound quality is superb (while maintaining the edge!). Sounds of underwater movement, whispering ritualistic vocals, menacing synth-work and painfull and a distorted and painful sound wrapping it all up. Very nicely done for those who enjoy that classic early 90s Cold-Meat-Industry sound.
The next track called Frozen Meat...is a very cold monotonic industrial-drone piece. Ice cold to be exact, sub-zero temperatures while time stands completely still. Cool death-industrial rhythms here, and cool icy-moods. The third piece of meat on the plate Worms Under Skin moves into mysterious Megaptera´ ish territories, a very sacrilegious church-like feel to this. Almost a religious experience if you ask me, ritualistic ambient inside a huge church. Interesting bone-shattering electronic percussion later on here.
The first track on the B-side Mortified moves into heavy-ambient moods. The kind post-apocalyptic feels you´ll notice in a bleak movie like the Road. The sort of feeling when trees are dead, and the sound of birds is just... gone. The only company being yourself, and you're conscious of course. Ruined factory feel with a touch of melancholy, industrial Raison D´être sort of. Second track Stench offers creepy heavy fog among the tombstones of the dead, while John Carpenter´ ish horror synth lurks atmospherically in the background. Third track Morque gives the listener just feeling... being trapped (or locked) inside one of those drawers in a morgue. Feeling slightly claustrophobic and horrific while trying to keep your calm... WHICH YOU CANT!. Suffocating black-moods and tar-like darkness-of-sound suck you in like quick-sand, just the way how dark-ambient should work.
A perfect death-industrial masterpiece with a superb sound-quality without losing the minimal-edge (Atmospheric rawness would be one way to describe it). A perfect fusion between pure dark ambient and menacing death-industrial. Dark ambient with a more... horror orientated direction?. You shouldn't miss it, seek it out! Contact the artist or the label regarding this release, it doesn't show on Bandcamp or Discogs.
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