Comforter Inc. - Faustrecht (Ltd. Edition) (2002)

GENRE..... Noise
LABEL...... Spirals Of Involution
MODE....... VBRkbps / Joint-Stereo
REL.DATE.. Oct-27-2008

It had to happen sooner or later. An encounter with a release so bewilderingly intense,
violent and punishing that it nearly left this reviewer a shattered and broken husk of a man
as a result of the listening experience. Well done Comforter Incààyou nearly beat me with
this one. I was actually seeing colours in front of my eyes after this m*therfucking
injection of blistering sensory overload. Wowwwwwzzzzaaaaa ! I should have guessed what was
in store before loading up the CD player as the cover just screamed æharsh noiseÆ and æpower
electronicsÆ. It was the ferocity and intensity of the sounds spitting from the speakers
that actually confirmed my suspicions. That, of course, and the cover art in which a
skeletal figure stands between two god almighty artillery guns blatantly aimed at the
beholder and all bathed in a crimson red hue called strong-hint-of-blood.

Comforter Inc. is a name that IÆve heard mention of although, until now, I havenÆt had the
acquaintance with any of their releases. Hailing from Russia, Comforter Inc. is the harsh
noise project of Andrei Alexeev who also runs the Spirals of Involution label with his
brother Alexander who, incidentally, also fronts his own power electronics & harsh noise act
Biomass. The topic of review, here, æFaustrechtÆ from Comforter Inc. was released as a
limited run CDr on the Spirals of Involution imprint way back in 2003. So, without further
ado lets get to the meat of the gravyàà.

Track one sounds, for all the world, like a legion of dosed up crack-heads simultaneously
and furiously dialling through the stations on a brace of satanically possessed and fucked-
up analogue radios connected to the mother of all malfunctioning amplifiers. This is
seriously damaging stuff. Searing blasts of white noise compete against a squall of all
consuming static that glitches in and out behind all manner of stop-start abrasive metallic
scrapings, renderings and slashings. Vague snatches of distorted and disembodied vocals
burst the surface sounding like some dread demon trapped in the circuitry desperately
trying, and failing, to break free from an electronic Hell. Distortion and bit-crushing
technology are applied with a devastating ferocity to release a vortex of searing plasma
sound. This is genuinely bruising, speaker damaging stuff. At nine minutes and 16 seconds
into the track there is no sign of an eye within this arena of audio conflict and my ears
are in serious danger of haemorrhaging. This is sonic warfare. A violent, bloody audio
holocaust inflicted on the listener. Five rounds with Mike Tyson in spiked gloves wouldnÆt
be as punishing as this. This is the sound of mountains being torn from their roots, of
obliteration and devastation in the path of a scorching pyroclastic flow; the sound of the
apocalypse unveiling in a scalding, slow motion shock wave of abrasive auditory attrition
and assault. Flagellation of the ears doesnÆt come any better sculpted than this, good
people.

Track 2 introduces itself to the listener via a corrosive shower of super-heated, hazardous
noise akin to an aural teratogen that skewers the brain releasing destructive demons
designed to effect a total system shutdown. Amidst the boiling cauldron of caustic sonics
razor sharp, ultra-high frequency LFO bursts pierce the waves of white and pink noise in a
squall of excoriating pain. Approaching the 6 minute mark the mood abruptly changes and the
sonics become more glitchy with deep, reverberating sine bursts punctuating the proceedings
before the track collapses once more into a super-storm of metallically rendered electronics
and white noise bursts. There is no melody here, just wave, after wave after unrelenting
wave of harsh, electrifying and all encompassing noise. There are vocals buried deep within
the mix and deconstructed to the point of almost non-existence, subsumed into a vast ocean
of bit-crushed sound. If there is any structure to this track then it has been transformed
and disguised to the point of being totally and comprehensively random. At high volume this
is akin to being interfaced with some grand-scale neural net possessed of a serious
migraine, its processors and circuitry overloaded to the point of meltdown. This is the
sound of pain. Of War. Of Armageddon. Of abject terror.

Looking back to history, General Noriega got off lightly when George Dubya Snr blasted the
South American dictators compound with a selection of hard rock epics way back in Æ89. If
the US Army could have deployed Comforter Inc.Æs Faustrecht and loaded up the military
jukebox they would have achieved total surrender within nano-seconds instead of the days it
actually took! This is the sound of out and out psychological warfare lovingly recreated on
this CD for your listening (dis)pleasure.

The only negative criticism I could muster is that the punishing maelstrom of both tracks
never really evolve over the course of their 20 plus minutes of existence and instead become
almost fractal in that any one segment of a track bears a striking self similarity to any
other segment. Some variety would have been welcome though I guess this is so far removed
from Comforter Inc.Æs war campaign agenda as to be rendered completely superfluous and
redundant as a criticism.

Whilst this release was an exhilarating adrenalin rush, at 20 minutes apiece you need to be
a confirmed audio masochist to sit through both tracks in one session, or, needful of some
aural catharsis to wipe the mindÆs slate nice and clean. But be warned, this doesnÆt just
squeegee clean your third eye, it tears it from its metaphysical socket and eats it for an
encore. Not so long ago I reviewed GelsominaÆs æNostahlgiaÆ and this release occupies very
similar musical terrain as a point of reference. Where Gelsomina make heavy use of guitar
feedback and FX destruction Comforter Inc. sound as though they only employ pure electronics
which, in terms of technique, sets them slightly apart. Both employ the shock and awe
concept of musical warfare, however, so if you are devotees of Harsh Noise seek out a copy
of this CD and enjoy your40 minute immersion in the sounds of the evolving apocalypse.

Tracklist:

01 Untitled
02 Untitled

Comforter_Inc.-Faustrecht-Limited_Edition-CDR-2002-D2H

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