Maskhead - Strange Attracions.

Maskhead – Strange Attractions – CD – Aussaat – Aussaat28-2006

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1.      Taste of Lust and Metal.

2.      Bonded By Leather Hallucinations.

3.      For Seduction.

4.      Fleshscraped

5.      Strange Attractions.

Maskhead is an anonymous Finnish project the has been active since 2015.

Strange Attractions, begins as guttural noise and feedback for Taste of Lust and Metal. It feels like metal is being scraped and hit, this is then treated to feedback and distort. These two elements begin to play off each other and are cut into by deep bass feedback. The feedback begins to sing through everything, echoing and wailing. Deep drones summon a choppier distortion, that roars and resonates to take the lead, screechy noise runs just behind it. The full symphony of the track is now in full swing, until lone feedback signals the end.

Distortion, clanging and whistling low level noise build Bonded by Leather Hallucinations, I like how it all simmers allowing the different elements to interact for a long period of time and slowly rise to static and an underlying tonal progression that is slight melody. Feedback hums in and out of the sound like a frequent visitor. The thicker hum of bass begins to reveal itself later in the track adding a deeper base to the work and allowing the crackle to bounce around more within the sound. Metal shuffles and scrapes alone to  end the track.

You can feel the sound scrape and rumble like metallic movement on For Seduction. Feedback judders over this as if being dragged over sandpaper, it radiates rough surface. Feedback wails another layer over this as it gets rougher and increasingly  abrasive.   Layers such as metallic crackling, feedback, waves of distortion, intensify to beef up the sound to full effect.

Fatter bass throws Fleshscraped  at me, metal is abused in a freeform manner along with a bit of contact microphone abuse to bounce off everything. The use of different metal sounds is quite complex here, it is the metallic movement used in the last track and hitting of metals which shoots the sound out further, a sharper explosion, like a big breath outwards, a flex. The contact microphone becomes the pulsation that leads each flex of sound.

The title track Strange Attractions, follows the language of the previous track, metal is moved and shuffled until a deep bass roar appears to back this. The bass increases to serve as an intro for a crispier bass roar to dominate, the metal shuffles on undistracted seemingly aware of the natural shifts in prominence Maskhead allows. A screaming feedback then binds everything to morph the track into a gigantic, dense roar. It feels Maskhead has saved the harshest for the last three minutes of the album. I like how he cuts into the mass to make it falter without it being bothered by this, the noise is way out of control for a time, it feels like it has taken over the creator and unplugging everything is the only way out. Excellent.

Maskhead's strength as an artist is hidden by the name, you think, oh noise dude in a mask, yeah right, here we go. But the work is very intricate, there are many subtleties in the work with a very fine eye for detail. I will say that this is present day harsh noise at its best. I can, very much, see why Aussaat would release this. 10/10.

Choppy Noodles 2026