Album: False Flags
Artist: AntiValium
Label: Self-released
Catalogue no: N/A
Tracklist:
1. Lie
2. I
Remember
3. For
What
4. Icon
5. Shot
After Shot
6. Coming
to Dinner
7. In
this Together
8. Pass
the Stranger
What do you get when you
put two members of KnifeLadder in a room with some noise-making electronics,
set up a tape-machine somewhere, tell them to spontaneously improvise, and see
what comes out at the other end? You get AntiValium, aka Hunter Barr and Andrew
Trail, who produce an unholy collision of jerky rhythms, grating drones,
effects, and noisy mayhem, a kind of melding of disjointed, unconnected beats
with acidic death industrial aesthetics. Stand in awe of this gargantuan,
oil-smeared beast with acid for blood coursing through its veins, furnace fires
in its belly, and lethally-sharp scythes for hands.
‘Lie’ begins with a
child’s voice singing a simple song, replaced by a rasping oscillation
accompanied by a buzz, the machine self-starting and booting-up a program of
malefic intent and violence. ‘I Remember’ jerks in on a spasticated rhythm,
while grinding, scraping, scratching defilements mutilate and butcher flesh and
bone in the background. Anguished, distorted vocals spew spite, rage, and
disappointment in a torrential deluge. Crashing the bloody party is ‘For What’,
a heavyweight slab of industrial percussive electronics, the kind that’s played
at a pre-Armageddon night at the local dance-hall, a platform for agitation and
fomenting revolution. Inciting further disturbance and unrest is ‘Icon’, a
broken, twisting rhythm a comrade-in-arms of the concrete and steel percussive
elements, a soapbox for more anger-filled vocals shouted through a loudhailer.
This is the fulcrum, the pivot point at which it either tips into resistance or
supine acquiescence. The momentum building here is undeniable, and all it would
take would be a small spark to detonate it into explosive action…
‘Shot After Shot’ is the
inevitable response from those who have the most to lose – the authorities and
the rulers. Sweeping drones supported by a strident beat, with voices mixed in,
portray a massed battalion of the serried faceless and emotionless forces of
oppression, awaiting the signal to begin suppression and decimation.
The pace lets up in
‘Coming to Dinner’, a stalemate perhaps while forces regather and recuperate, the
calm before the storm constituting a brief respite before the next explosion of
anger instigates more bloodshed. This is almost death ambient, more about
atmosphere and setting a scene rather than relentless assault and attack; a
menacing, loping behemoth, crushing and trampling, a harbinger of ruin and
catastrophe. ‘In this Together’ (a now-hollow sounding phrase coined by a
certain political party here in the UK) comes the closest to being a song on
this album, driven by a pounding bassline and replete with ‘tuneful’ vocals.
This is almost a victory anthem, although it’s still informed by dark ambient
and noise aesthetics with a little bit of martial industrial thrown in for some
seasoning.
‘Pass the Stranger’ is
the most reminiscent of old-school industrial to me, pounding drums belting out
a tribalistic/martial beat, blasting fuzzed-out guitar, and treated vocal line.
This, if I had to name one at all, is perhaps my favourite here, as it takes me
back in some weird manner to way back when to the time I first got into
industrial. There’s such a mixture here: the martial, the industrial, the punk,
and the noise freakouts that pretty much summed up my early encounters with the
scene.
One of the most pleasing
aspects of False Flags is that it
sustains its intensity for the whole duration of the album – it sounds as if
AntiValium had a lot to get off its chests and it all pours, nay spews, out in
a flood of acidity and acrimony. I can’t vouch for Messrs. Barr and Trail’s
inspirations, but whatever they are I took a great deal away from this as it
matched my feelings about the current political and social situation.
Everything appeared to align in that regard. I couldn’t shake the feeling that
AntiValium was just concretising into sound what I’ve been feeling. On that
score alone, it’s a blinder of an album, distilling a witches’ brew of anger,
dissatisfaction, resentment, and ill-feeling into eight tracks over nearly 50
minutes. This deserves to be blasted out loudly and proudly.
Available for preorder
now (out on October 12th 2019) as a limited edition CD and a digital
download:
Pymon Marshall 2019.
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