If the music of Xasthur's Subliminal Genocide doesn't give you the freakin' chills, I don't know what will. This is cold, desolate, brutal stuff, far removed from the symphonic black metal that is in abundance these days. Considering that Xasthur is from the United States (San Francisco actually) makes this all the more intriguing, as the walls of distorted and ravaged guitars, drum blasts, electronic sound effects, and howling, cavernous vocals sound like something straight out of Norway. Masterminded by one man, Xasthur (Scott Conner, aka Malefic), Subliminal Genocide is the fifth release of musical torture from this project, and it's a creepy and pummeling ride all the way. Many of the songs are long and droning, with plenty of distorted guitar dirges accompanied by incomprehensible vocal shrieks, but for whatever strange reason it all works. No matter how many times you start to think "man, where is all this noise leading to", the music is almost impossible to walk away from. Tracks like "Prison of Mirrors" and "Trauma Will Always Linger" conjur up images from your worst nightmare-picture a single Viking boat slowly approaching over an icy sea with a crew of corpses and one ghastly zombie at the helm growling out some angry and far away sounding expletives...these are the kind of thoughts that popped into this writers head while spinning Subliminal Genodice. See what is does for you.
Track Listing
1 Disharmonic Convergence (1:50)
2 Prison of Mirrors (12:42)
3 Beauty Is Only Razor Deep (7:00)
4 Trauma Will Always Linger (8:29)
5 Pyramid of Skulls (2:36)
6 Arcane and Misanthropic Projection (9:40)
7 Victim of Your Dreams (6:12)
8 Through a Trance of Dispondency (3:30)
9 Loss and Inner Distortion (4:04)
10 Subliminal Genocide (8:49)
11 Malice Hidden in Surrealism (6:37)
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