Slow Murder - Deserving.

Slow Murder – Deserving – CD/Download – Self Released – 2024.

https://slowmurder.bandcamp.com/music

https://straightpanic.bandcamp.com/album/slow-murder-straight-panic

          1.     Hands In Prized Mouth.

          2.     Ulcer.

          3.     Target Practice.

          4.     Only.

          5.     Permanent.

Jo don't read this review, just keep the work coming and jog on.

Having seen Slow Murder perform as Insatiable Wound a few months ago, I have become very aware of the project – obsessively so, I cannot stop thinking about that performance at Cafe Centralla in Birmingham, it is a short, sharp, green memory that has been etched into my head. At that show it was Flesh Licker that gave the most performance art performance of the night, but Insatiable Wound completely blind sided me. There is no doubt that Slow Murder is now amongst the top of the pile in todays scene, they rub shoulders with Knifedoutofexistence, Pale World, Mlhest, Ordeal by Roses, Blackcloudsummoner, XAL, S.T.A.B. Electronics, AM NOT and Stark. However, my job here is to decide if Slow Murder is good or great? I think we have a project that may unintentionally be someone who may be that project that could be our best.

I have listened to this album in two stages, first it was when Dean Llloyd Robinson shared out a post that said there was new Slow Murder out. The post said that Deserving was available on Bandcamp, I purchased it immediately almost unaware I was doing it, as if I was in an obsessive psychosis. I played that through my Bluetooth speaker. I loved it instantly, no questions asked. The CD arrives a week or so later, so I play it in the car and I play it a lot. The CD is green, I can't read the text, just see green, that's what happens when you see Jo, there is a lot of green. The album makes good use of long noises and plays with the levels of cold that the work gives off make play to the past of Power Electronics and recent players who like it cold.

You have to address that they are Welsh, from Wales. I go there a lot due to family commitments and you have to be aware that it is a completely different landscape to England. They are steeped in mythology like the UK, but more so, the landscape absorbs pain and never lets it go, I feel it every time I am there, I love Wales but am glad to escape that volcanic pain, the pain of my family, the pain that Wales resonates. This is why Ordeal by Roses and Slow Murder are so intensely unique in today's Power Electronics scene. Deserving is 5 solid performances that leads me to the conclusion that this album is great, I stand by that.