“Take me away from this, just leave me somewhere else”. Ventenner vocalist Charlie Dawe seeks salvation on ‘Six Blood’. And on Distorture – the album which spawns this earlier single – he finds it. The third long playing record from the London-based four-piece marks a clear departure from the electronica prevalence of its two predecessors. Whilst there is still an occasional place for huge sweeping synthetics, their light is dimmed by the ominous clouds of industrial strength aggression and growing appetite for discomfiture that now hang overhead.
Combining an excess of satanic, brooding guitars, monster rhythms and Dawes’ larynx constantly straining at the leash with a dark, sinister lyrical content, comparisons are bound to be drawn with the more metal fatigued industrialised elements of Nine Inch Nails and those grotesque shock-horror tactics once employed by Marilyn Manson. But for all that Distorture undoubtedly frames its main story within a much wider narrative of noise nihilism and untrammelled terror, it also possesses rare moments of reflective beauty and quiet vulnerability.
[Rating:3.5]
Distorture was released on 1st September 2014 via Sonic Fire Records
