Infirmary

USA Illinois based noise project Infirmary is another state side act that often treads the thin line between Harsh noise and HNW. The project became active in 2008, and since then they’ve put out about 13 or so release that have taken in splits and compilation tracks along with a few full lengths too. I’ll have to admit in the past I’ve been underwhelmed by this projects work finding it either rather mediocre or indistinct from lots of other projects, but I must say I’m quite taken by the brutal, crude & locked slice of pure HNW on this 3inch CDR. As with anything put out on the french AnarchoFreaksProduction label the CDR case features atmospheric black and white photograph taken by the labels head(Greg whose also in the brutal and uncompromising HNW Å). This time the pictures of lots of piles of school chairs at odd angles, which of course nicely fits in the discs title and makes for a great stand alone picture too.

The disc features a single just over fifteen minute track of mid-paced ‘n’ crude wall-making that nicely jerks ‘n’ judders the listener around. The tracks ‘wall’ is built around a constant and central juddering and boiling noise tone, which is echoed and mimicked by smaller jittering ‘n’ hacking static semi-tones. It’s a fairly simply and set pattern of tones, but it’s highly effective in it’s crude ‘n’ totally unrelenting focuses.

It’s always nice to be surprised by a project you’d all but written off, and I must say that’s exactly what “Static Geometries Of The Darkened Anti-Void” a brutal and rewarding surprise.

SIDE A.)

I.) SLOWLY CAME THE DECLINE:

Ripping tearing relentless harsh noize that is anything but slow. In your face and without mercy.Crunching static,Throbbing sub bass movement and pulverizing noize.Right out the gates charging like thundering hooves into battle.There are not really any changes to speak of through the duration of this save for maybe some subtle differences in texture and structure here and there.But even that is hard to tell.It's sorta like when you hear or say a word so many times that it no longer resembles a real word but starts to sound foreign and strange.It is hard to tell if there are any changes at all or if it is just your mind trying in vain to put order into chaos.Either way by the end of this you will find that all reason has slowly declined and this is just side A.

SIDE B.)

II.) STILLNESS COMES TO PEORIA STATE HOSPITAL:

This is a strange genre of music.It is almost like the harsh noize equivalent to drone doom or minimal ambient.Very minimal and with what seems to be a simple formula.Where as drone and ambient are "Pleasant" this is anything but.Much more challenging. Almost like an audio endurance test.This could be used as a means of "Audio Torture" if the victim is your average closed minded pop rock consuming consumer.This differs from the A side quite a bit. Here it almost sounds like a monolithic beast is grinding something or someone within it's massive teeth.Perhaps even harsher than the first track.After long intervals of this sort of thing it becomes hard to tell what is what anymore.The song titles almost come off as sarcastic as there is little stillness to be found.Just a seemingly endless barrage of harsh noize from start to finish.

HARSH NOIZE TIL DEATH!

7/10

-ABATTOIR-

Side A.)

I.) RAVENMOCKER PART I:

Begins with rumbles and symbol beats. You can a hear electric guitar in the background. The feeling is heavy like you been walking through the desert for days with no thoughts just wondering and walking...Drums play in sync with every foot beat to the deserted ground.Guitars playing all your memories and all your regrets.Death hangs over your head in the form of raven, mocking what you already know.The tempo picks up.Muffeld rumbles fill the vacant air behind drums and guitar they play on...After some time the sounds change into bursts of winds as if from electric coils snapping against metal.Following is the raven's shadow leading you to a psychedelic and wonderous place.Clouds move ever so swift across the inverted sky.Ears are ringing like lightning.Again strikes the electrical forces dancing in your mind. Then suddenly all stops.Is the journey over?

Side B.)

II.) RAVENMOCKER PART II:

The stillness so vacant yet filled with sound.Not sure if time has stoped or is rewinding.Broken chimes ring gently in background. Is it the calm before the storm of madness? Or is it the raven? Raven's dark shadow full of tricks its caw ques the druming and symbols as steady guitars arise vibrating the ground and inhancing your vertigo.Steady is the music but restless is your mind wondering...Searching til the end of time.Death hangs over and follows swallowing you whole.All the essence of your spinning soul feeling the stings of cobras bites thickening your blood.Fever rises and lungs heave.Becoming color blind.Steady drums continue then fade to bold static.Now it's all you hear till a distant horn signals the end of your journey.

I give this trancer a 9.5/10

-NECRODOLL-

Infirmary “Necropenetrator”: a payoff of patience and endurance

"Infirmary’s “Necropenetrator,” recently released on the Kalamazoo-based label SNSE, was placed in my hands described as “harsh noise,” which prepared me for an unmelodic, non-traditional listening experience. However, I hadn’t the foggiest notion just how extreme and unrelenting Infirmary’s sound would be, so much so that upon initially dropping the needle, I was convinced the grooves of the record had been damaged.

Out of nothing, an avalanche of crackling cacophony burst from the speakers as though the needle were dragging through gravel. The sound had nowhere to rest, continually pouring out, unsettled and unbridled.

After a few minutes of enduring the havoc, I skipped around on the record in search of a moment of relief, only to find the same mess catapulting forth from every “song”. Convinced this couldn’t be right and that my copy was damaged (the vinyl had been slightly warped), I went to SNSE’s website to sample clips of the record. I was relieved to find that the record was not damaged as the clips sounded identical to my vinyl copy.

Wait. WHAT!?! My relief did a complete 180 to utter horror. How could I possibly review this uncompromising onslaught of chopped up sludge? I had heard some edgy albums in my time, but this one unquestionably pushed the inaccessibility of noise far beyond anything I had previously experienced, this coming from someone who loves the second half of Can’s “Tago Mago” and is familiar with Merzbow! Every piece was completely drenched in a near-identical-sounding destructo clutter with only slight hints of sonic variation coming up from underneath for air. Occasionally very distorted vocals entered the mix but they were merely another instrument of chaos within the madness.

Speaking of instruments, I didn’t even know how Infirmary were achieving these sounds. The liner notes listed the equipment employed as “junk, electronics, analog 8-track”. I could definitely detect the junk.

Regardless of my trepidations with taking on such a beast, I put on my most open mind and dove in headfirst, and at the behest of my housemates. “How can you honestly review this bullshit?” I explained that I had written A+ papers in high school where I had understood about as much on the topic as I did this record.

After several spins, sitting in the thin darkness of my home, it began to dawn on me that listening to this caterwauling sonance was not unlike watching snow on a television set when I was but a wee lad. When I stared into the static-soaked screen long enough, I would begin to see shapes, patterns, objects, all dancing and swimming about, a drug-free hallucination. The same was the case with “Necropenetrator.” The more I stayed as a tourist in this menacing land of sonic turbulence, the more individual sounds and rhythms became present in the mix. One piece had a catchy little groove, in Infirmary’s own unique way, and was aptly titled “Fuck Dancing”.

Surely this was a result of my starved and bored mind feeding me those ornaments, textures, and pulses of noise to thwart Infirmary’s attempt to drive me completely out of society. Yet, upon next listen, those same creatures were still frolicking in the mire, along with some new friends. With each spin, it became clear to me that this was not an impenetrable wall of opaque pretense, this was a prime example of beneficial repeated listens as there were the oddest textural hooks buried under layers of intense madness.

Either these guys are masters of this art or just got lucky; either way, lovers of challenging but rewarding listening experiences will find “Necropenetrator” a worthwhile journey."

"Necropenetrator is just the kind of ridiculous harsh noise record I need. It's like filling a neti pot with television static and flushing out one's sinuses for thirty-some minutes. There are nine interchangeable tracks, each one as stoic, brutal and unflinching as the next, with absolutely no tension or surprises or personality, just pure noise in the "wall of" variety. The only noticeable change is when a track stops, thanks to the two-second silence that acts as the only signifier the Infirmary have moved on from "Voodoo Doll" to "Cocksucking Gnome". Gotta hand it to these guys for abusing sound so badly that the breaks between tracks become as crucial to the experience as the noise itself."

"Seriously, this LP fucking slays!

Infirmary never disappoints. Every release I've heard takes a unique, original and inventive approach to harsh noise wall, maybe even an evolution of the genre."

"This lp really is a great contemplative journey through varying textures and the dynamics wherein and how the jags are initially created. right up there with the NAG/BSBC lp for being a milestone of the last few years!"

"Excellent tape from this constantly evolving American noise artist. This one is a Harsh Noise Wall-based release on a label that is mostly oriented to works of that genre, although this project has a variety of sonic facets. The recording on this one is a very high-quality room recording that gives a very powerful atmosphere of the live performance of this artist, which is also impressive. Black and white collage insert in the usual NARCOLEPSIA style with no side-text on the j-card and a small logo of a woman's foot in a high-heeled show. Very nice minimal layout on the cassettes that all have that unique NARCOLEPSIA feel to them. This one stands out from the pack because it is INFIRMARY and you can hear the quality of the distinct sounds captured onto this release. Intense HNW sound that stares into the void, like the central point facing upward on a rotating platform, spiralling a noise vortex into oblivion. On each of the three tracks on this cassette you can hear the sound of the amplifier, even as it turns off ending the recording. This is a nice touch that really takes you into the recording space with the artist and helps to put the sound deeper into our skull. Highly recommended pure noise from an artist with a strong commitment to quality and personal sonic growth, highly recommended as with other releases from this individual."

"Very good harsh noise wall with a fantastic field recording section closing out the track. The same thing plays on both sides, but it's worth listening to twice. The track is 30 minutes and as it starts you're hit with a nice turbid wall of death, bassy frequencies filling everything out all over. Eventually, as with some/most wall noise, you forget it's there...but when it drops out, you are immediately hit in the face by the density and volume of the sound you just got steamrolled by. Very nice work."

"Infirmary are from my hometown of peoria, illinois builds walls of harsh noise heavily influenced by doom. these are some of the most evil sounding recordings ever release to mankind. seriously. live performances are very unique, differing almost every time: fog machines and crushing walls of sound that you can feel. the song i posted is called “frozen fields” from the self-titled infirmary tape. most songs are too long to post on here, but this one is a shorter one. listen and be doomed. harsh noise hell!"

"The Simple Truth is, the more I talk about it, the less you will actually care, defeating the purpose of my time entirely, yet like all things that are worth something, so must come the risk of being indifferent. Such could be said of the poor, or to vegans, we consciously care enough to satisfy the others expectations around us. then go back to messaging our own egos, while the others who rarely get the recognition they deserve are left to be discovered, even now and again by those who will honestly listen."

"Infirmary- for Joe Lombardo c40 ltd. 1 copy (self release)

Suffer, you miserable, worthless shit. You Hear That? It's Your Death."