Mass Hallucination
Out Now
DL | Cassette
No need for lyrical analysis. No need for thematic detail. No need for anything but three swipes of the spinal cord. Three internal scrapings from the new release by Mass Hallucination. By Ryan-Lewis Walker.
The crack of the neck. And the crack of everything else.
Composed of Chris R and Tom Shuff of Coded Marking, former Cattle bassist Tom Goodall and Will from Self-Immolation Music, and released via Glasgow’s Makeshift Swahili, this eponymous album follows the band’s debut demo from August last year.
This time, although still dedicated to the twitchy contortions of all things that slide in and out of the parameters according to noise, hardcore and post-punk – a sound entirely built to blow nowhere except out, they wanted to produce something that was still just as raw, but a little more polished and song-structured.
First up, Lacerated leans into the flank with a finger instead of knives, yet succeeds in introducing a hole just as deep as any common blade. Bookended with metallic aches of feedback scraping across the dead air in a decaying chamber, its suppurated complexion surges and squeals with cannibalistic action.
It’s soon followed by Human Figures. Cracking apart like a blowtorch to the bosom of a leather settee, it erupts from the shackles in a skin-soldering rush of golem–goading power. Thuds of molten bass, collisions of feral guitars, vocals howling into the abyss, all swallowed by the concave of density and despair.
Finally, in Dragging A Rope we hear a near-perfect synergy of those Negative Approach and Killing Joke influences bleeding through. A tag-team of bass and drums punctuates the battleground whilst humanoid fractures of manic guitars shave with shards of glass elsewhere, ending on an explosion akin to sticks of dynamite strapped to the base of a brutalist building at the interchange of West Yorkshire and Hell.
No need for lyrical analysis. No need for thematic detail. No need for anything.
The crack of the…
~
Mass Hallucination | Bandcamp
Makeshift Swahili | Bandcamp
Ryan-Lewis Walker | Louder Than War
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