The Haters/The Black Scorpio Underground - [Hate Mail Records - 2011] | Any release that features a naked lady with a cross stuck up her vagina on its cover is fine for me, so I was anxious to listen to this split CDr as soon as I saw it. The first track is by The Haters, who hopefully don't need any introduction. It's a twenty-two minutes long chunk of totally chaotic harsh noise and pure mayhem. A cascade of constant feedback, synth pulses, white noise and junk metal/contact microphone abuse. Actually, it sounds like Gx Jupitter-Larsen layered three or four distinct harsh noise pieces one over the other and waited to see the results. I know it doesn't sound exciting, but I think it's a legitimate choice. It's horrible noisy, why don't make it even more messy? I'm not sure if it's actually The Haters' own material that has been used for this purpose or if it's stuff by other musicians, but it doesn't matter. Harsh noise aficionados should know that acts like Blod or Emil Beaulieau used other people's noise as source before, and came out with brilliant records. After all, this not-so-appropriately named track "22_Minute_ Glitch" doesn't sound bad. I have to say that it's far from my favourite material by The Haters though ( I’m thinking "Drunk On Decay", "Death-Defying Sickness", "Hearing Mud Dry"), so I don't recommend this track as introduction to their work. I was not familiar with the second band on the split, The Black Scorpio Underground, and their twenty minutes long "The Blasphemer Returns" surprised me. The track opens with badly manipulated (tape?) samples from some horror movie, and then a very dull loop kicks in. I can't really tell what's being looped but it could be a tape loop with some metal sounds, or something from the movie utilized for the first sample. Anyway, it consists mostly of very annoying, damaged and crunchy static with some skipping sounds left barely audible in the background. The loop goes on for what seems like forever, varying only slightly and suddenly becoming quieter towards the end of the track. There are new bits of sounds to discover each time the loop kicks in so the experience is not boring if you like this kind of stuff. It kind of reminded me of some Inseminoid (Culver + Mutant Ape) live gigs i witnessed.
In conclusion, this split is ok. Not spectacular, but still fine. It's extremely messy harsh noise and an alienating noisy loop that goes on for twenty minutes. Plus you get crosses and vaginas. Only for fine palates. Nicola Vinciguerra
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