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Some things are not for the faint of heart, so if you are weak of stomach or spleen, turn away now. For those who have guts of iron and a taste for the harsher music, then I have a tasty treat for you. UK based Skat Injector is experimental electronics, wearing the decimated innards of metal proudly, as they seek to drag your ears through your arse. We are going back to their 2018 release of the album, Unknown Violator, out on Slime City Records.

There are sixteen tracks in total and “A Garden Only Watered In Blood” is the greeting that tells you to strap in and enjoy the journey into madness. Are we being taunted by the ghosts of the bled? The demonic vocals bubble over the echoing cold space. However, the meaty “Slaughter is the Best Medicine” is a overwhelming onslaught of sped up black metal styled beats and tortured electronics, fritzing out and pummelling your psyche into dust, while the vocals growl.

“Urbane Misanthrope” builds and builds with sounds before letting loose with the almost danceable rhythms, however this could be trap! You don’t fit in the expected square and the gunfire of the beats is the warfare of the city streets in your head. A head pounding ode to the dispossessed that perfectly feeds into the oh so short and sweet desecration that is “Hollow Mantra.”

There is a cover of “Goodbye Horses,” originally by Q Lazzarus, right at the end, and admittedly it seems quite a reasonable version….. until you hear the vocals. Distortedly slow sounding, stretched and unfathomable in its ability to be disturbing, yet still enjoyable in that serial killer sort of way.

The cover artwork confirms the title is a mash-up of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures and Depeche Mode’s Violator, both iconic albums and carried through into the titles of the tracks for the most part. This is clever and in a way, I can see a certain similarity. Joy Division is one of the first post-punk bands, forging a sound that at the time was ground breaking and very much about being the outsider in a bleak world. Violator was the album that was not highly completed before Depeche Mode came together in the studio and it brought forth simpler tracks with lyrics which sound like they are full of provocation, and yet point to a guilt behind those words. Skat Injector have taken inspiration from both and created an album of modern day mental ills and truths that permeate our lives…. it is just in the form of noisecore to get your heart thundering.

Unknown Violator | Skat Injector

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The label Cioran Records, has released the experimental album Les Couleurs d’une Fièvre, by French group Flagorne. Maquerelle (vocals, lyrics, synthesizers, samplers) and Afga06l (additional voices, computer, digital instruments) make up the group which combines industrial noise with black metal.

And so the decent into Hell begins with “Salutations,” brutally assaulting your ears. Salut à vous! or hello to everyone, though this welcome is full of bad tidings for the listener. Drawn taut and extruded, the music and vocals speak of pain before there is a pause, when the voice expresses how all this is a fever dream in the aftermath of a holocaust. Candaule(s), a king of Lydia in the 7th century BC, was mentioned by Herodotus as a ruler of great depravity, and in the track “Adresses,” the line ‘On sera Candaule de tout un empire/We will be Candaule of an entire empire,’ hints at wonton wickedness. The music is spurred on by an explosive rhythmic momentum, swirling in its majestic inferno.

From the depths you can hear the shaman of a bygone era chanting their ritual in “Dévore,” before the electronic clicks and clanks kick in with the vehement whispers and discontented screams, that retreat and flood forth again, which is understandable when one is being devoured. The rise of empires also brings about destruction and this is the angst of “De rien de bien,” where you can almost feel the blood pumping freely from wounds of the tortured souls, as the mechanised world continues to smash on without any emotion. The final track is “Comme plusieurs,” that begins subtly, as I strain my ears to adjust to the bleeping programming, until the vocals take us by surprise, like a call to prayers through a megaphone, and there is a gravity to the austere tone. Maybe a judgement.

Les Couleurs d’une Fièvre basically translates to The Colours of a Fever, and indeed the album does feel like a delirious nightmare, visceral and haunting, as if you were unfortunate enough to enter the circles of hell and yet you know that this is all earth bound. And maybe that is the crux of it all, that man makes his own hell on earth. Flagorne will not disappoint.

Les couleurs d’une fièvre | Flagorne | Cioran Records (bandcamp.com)

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