Parthenfelder - Enduring To The End
I have just discovered a new Danish label called Section 1, and I have also discovered that Section 1 releases some highly obscure releases with new and unknown acts (Which I haven´t read or heard about until now!). Nevertheless! One of the cassettes I received from Section 1 which I gave a listen to, was the debut by a power-electronics act called Parthenfelder, and the album is called Enduring To The End. I am not 100% sure who the band members are (No info on the World Wide Web!), but I have my suspicions... but offcourse I am not gonna tell you!. A double-sided cassette, filled with atmospheric and hypnotizing concentrated anguish!
First track Deliverance Of Tourture... Tourture?. Maybe they meant Torture instead of Tourture (Or did they?)... Something about a tour being... well... like torture... oh never mind. The track starts with a serious spoken-voice recording/sample with a moody and doom-laden synth in the background, I suspect it is a sample taken from some old documentary related to WW2. Then the track starts off (just like that!). Primitive and hellish drone noises... a bit like the engines of old fighter airplanes (Diving bomber aero-planes!). Looped and animalistic sounds of human voices. Hidden sound-activity and spiritual vocals lurk deep in the background. A flawless power-electronics intro-track. Very German old school! (Anenzephalia, Ex-Order)
The second track Abstersion ( the action or process of cleansing ) is a track that sounds...very cold and compact. Incredible dense and incredible...mesmerizing. The recorded sound of a huge machine room in the lowest parts of the earth... As a fan of Doctor Who, I cannot help thinking back to the cybermen's early episodes. They too ALSO did the action of cleansing... sort of.
The Third track Blinded By Ideology continues the looped machine-anguish with a focus on the vocals, very much in the same vein with Anenzephalia and Ex-Order. Not the aggressive noisy Whitehouse stuff, but more in the sort of monotonic and moody death-industrial sound. And yup, so far... it sounds like the real deal folks!.
The Fourth track Study On Hanging Rats (and the last track on the A-side) drives a pulsating hot needle in your bloody skull. Looped throbbing noises and flesh-scraping distorted moods... Fxxxxx great!
I think (maybe) there is maybe a hidden track on the A-side which isn´t mentioned in the booklet. So far I have counted 5 tracks on the A-side, and the booklet tells me that there are 4 tracks. No Matter. This track might just be the track called Stratagem (Deceiving and outwitting the enemy). Another decent, intense, and relentless ambient-noise track. Still maintaining that old-school Germanic sound!
"B-side" continues with Abondon All Hope (On Discogs it called Abandon!). A broody drone moves (slowly) up and down in close connection with the heavy wall of an analog bass sound. Love the effects on the vocals here again folks!.
The second track on the B-side called Enduring To The End. Continues in the same fashion as the previous track, just more menacing. Fans of Brighter Death Now´s Inner war should take notice!. Long and very epic!
The fourth track In This Land (Album title), cools it down with atmospheric harshness and aggressive ambient vocals. The lovely heavy-industrial sound here (very metallic!). The perfect mood/sound for describing a battlefield in the first World War!
Fourth track (and last track) Outro gets back to that German bomber aero-plane sound, or just the sound of fighter airplanes on a hangar... all humming together to create a cacophonic wall of destructive sound. Something going on in the background here sounds interesting!
An album that delivers something... well... nothing new really. But, why be new all the time?! This album delivers a sound that I think is a rather overlooked style/genre in the world of industrial and noise music. A style that borrows something from early power-electronics, industrial, and what we could call proto death-industrial?. An ambient version of power-electronics?. At one time another act (Dagda Mor) from Germany called the style Cold Electronics. Whatever Parthenfelder delivers the thing like pure perfection. Sounds like an old school in the new school, it does the thing!
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