Yunclas - Tripalium Ligatum
Limited cassette release from Spanish Marbre Negre. Yunclas is a highly productive act which started back in 2017. 7 albums, 1 split, and several EPs as well. Interesting detail regarding Yunclas is its sole-member Adolfo F, who normally is a guitarist doing hardcore punk in an older cult band called Intolerance. Yunclas is something far away from hardcore punk. The album works around a concept, which sounds like this :
"Tripalium Ligatum" is a work that shows the darkness of salaried slavery in the factories where the worker tortured and tied with different methods of the "Tripalium" but equally effective.
Tripalium basically means being tortured on an x-formed cross. And Ligarum means tied. The cover artwork itself almost returns to a kind old-school industrial aesthetic, the idea of cut-up images/collages where ancient and religious imagery gets mixed up with a factory´ ish background. The recorded material on the cassette also returns to that old aesthetic as well. Take Scatology with Coil, early Laibach, C93, Severed Heads, SPK and Konstruktivists sort of sound. Sounds good? Sure it does, and it sounds pretty original and personal as well (so it´s not a copy-a-band thing!).
First track Dolar Machina is one of those perfect industrial-music introductions. Rhythmic and ritualistic pile-driver thumpings, corrosive and disharmonic noise-guitarwork, ghost-like eerie tunes slither out from a broken radio... Very imaginative dark soundscape and VERY good! True industrial music in my book! Second track Patiens Vocatio starts with a looped and rhythmic sampling of warped radio-noise which gets accompanied by an evocative and almost vintage-sounding dark synth. Tribalistic metal-percussions is there as well, with strange mesmerizing recorded vocals in the background.
Third track Tripalium Ligarum enters further into the avant-garde sound. A very dream-like and psychedelic soundscape. A move away from the calculated industrial machines/aesthetic from the first two tracks, interesting guitar-work working in the background here as well. Fourth track Patiens Ad Mortem heightens a strange esoteric vibe. A sacrilegious monotony bleeds and pumps eternally into a mechanoid human-like being, a very dark and unforgiving piece! Fifth track Patiens Mora ends it into a quicksand of industrialized sound. Screaming microphones, power-tools, radio-noise all trapped into a subway-tunnel.
A pure and experimental vintage-sounding industrial album with a personal touch, without the elements of either power electronics, dark ambient, death industrial or harsh noise. Highly recommended for old-timer industrial fans, or for those who need something in the background while watching flicks like Begotten (without sound).
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