Album: Experi[Mental] Area
Artist: Psionic Asylum
Label: Distorted Void
Catalogue no: [DV-10]
Tracklist:
1. Meditation
Cave
2. Gas
Chambers
3. Forbidden
Research
4. Mind
Liberating Machine
5. The
Hall
6. Psionic
Mantra
Experi[Mental]
Area is Psionic
Asylum’s fourth album and their second for Russian label Distorted Void, which
issued Deathscapes in 2018. Previous
albums are Isolation (2015) on
CVLTFOREST and Coma on Noctivagant in
2017. Psionic Asylum specialise in creating death ambient/death
industrial/horror ambient soundscapes and atmospheres, using a combination of
drones and sound effects, and that combination is highly effective in conjuring
up images of dank dungeons, hidden places, illicit experiments, and abandoned
buildings holding nefarious secrets.
‘Meditation Cave’ begins
with a massively oscillating machine rasp, which gradually changes to an
equally monolithic drone providing backdrop for the sound of water, as if we’re
wading in a sewage tunnel. It smells mouldy and dank in here, a cesspit of
decay and rot, a place where no living being would wish to be. Whatever
meditation occurs here can only be of the dark and unhealthy kind, perhaps
easing contact with entities who are sworn enemies of mankind and who are
actively looking for ways to materialise on this plane. Perhaps the metallic
screechings and groans heard here are those very entities communicating their
dread desires to suggestive recipients. A distant and sustained jet howl, as if
heard from a distance, kicks off ‘Gas Chamber’, accompanied by inhalations and
exhalations as amplified through a gasmask. Whatever this is, it sounds like a
living beast and a poisonous one at that, whose very breath means death and
dissolution. It’s suffocating, oppressive, and life-denying.
Then we move on to
‘Forbidden Research’ and the title alone brings up images of mad professors
laughing maniacally in stone laboratories secreted in the towers of old castles
somewhere in Central Europe. In fact the opening whines remind me of winds
whipping around a stone tower, while the machine rhythms and noises hint at
unnatural things going on, a place where unsanctioned experimentation and
research is being conducted. It is likely that, in such a case, humans are the
guinea-pigs: one can never know to what end these experiments are being
performed – perhaps there isn’t a goal, just a perverted fetish of bloodletting
and cutting open of flesh. ‘Mind Liberating Machine’ doesn’t necessarily mean
what it says – the bangs and screams on this speak of something altogether more
unholy and abominable, unleashing steel hell on the weak prison of flesh,
mutilating and dismembering it, but even after all that the mind is still free
and unchanged. The atmosphere here is murky and unpleasant, full of rust and
mould, decaying flesh and spilt blood. The liberation spoken of here is only a
metaphorical one, a millisecond’s relief from intense pain and rupture before
the total dissolution of the consciousness.
‘The Hall’, wherever it
may be, whether a physical room or a mental construct, is vast, big enough for
sounds both large and small to be amplified immensely, almost filling every
inch of the space inside. The place is crumbling, dusty, and falling apart,
with debris scattered all over its floor. Creatures scuttle and skitter from
pile of fallen plaster to shattered slabs of wall, but whatever inhabits this
hall is not for man to see or to witness: beasts and insects that even the most
fervid imagination would fail to visualise. They all sound hungry and search
endlessly for any morsel of flesh that may come their way. ‘Psionic Mantra’
flies in like a horde of locusts intent on completely stripping everything,
before gigantic drum and horn blasts crashes in under a distorted voice
intoning something unintelligible. A mantra indeed, emanating from the bowels
of the Himalayas, where monks in black perform ceremonies forbidden since
before the dawn of man.
There’s not a lot of
light to be found on this album, in fact you’d be hard-pressed to find any at
all. The atmosphere positively drips with ichor and slime, and unhealthy and
despicable ‘things’ lurk in dark corners and in murky subterranean lakes. This
is what good death ambient/industrial should do – provoke creeping revulsion,
create images of spiritual and human rottenness, strip away the layers of gloss
to get to heart of fear and disgust. This has all of that and more, presenting
us with minutely observed sketches and diagrams of whatever inhuman actions are
going on here, sluiced in gore and blood. This, in other words, is a prime
example of the genre, and if you like this kind of thing then this is for you.
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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