Whoa. This LP is not for the faint of heart. My God, this thing is a roller coaster. One that will throw you off if you don't hold on tight. The acapella screaming on the track "Clairvoyant" is just such a discordant and gut wrenching moment. The screams, here, are some of the most intense expressions of emotions I think I've ever heard. The acapella screams even express their own philosophy of religion: "My God's face is made of mirrors;" "My God's face looks like my Father's." Basically what we have there is the idea that what we see in God is wish-fulfillment of the lost object of desire - Freud and Lacan would be proud.
The intermittent noise, dissonant ambience on tracks like "Line of Smoke," and bursts of extremely violent sounds emanating from tortured guitars make this band's extreme form of noise rock the Platonic Form of the term "acquired taste." That said, I distinctly remember performing John Paulson's "Epinicion" in high school concert band and expressing the same emotion but enjoying the hell out of it. That was an easy listen for me. Even atonal classical music can be enjoyable if listened to from a certain perspective. Moreover, I get the sense while I listen to this album that the raw emotion and expressiveness this music takes to perform is immense. These observations allowed me to really dig this album by my third listen. Perhaps they can help you with this LP as well.
At least for me, this album represents the abstract sense of how the world is today. I mean that seriously. "Pathways strictly defined" - the walling off of the bourgeoisie, "Control!" - via ideology, global capitalism has a "World Lock" quite literally. The chaos of White Suns' sound is born out the objective violence of unfairness - that a few people are born into a situation where they become wealthy, only leaving the scraps of pity and charity for the proletariat to fight over - thus solidifying the power of the bourgeoisie more. The vicious cycle of cut-throat competition is expressed in pattered sound.
I really don't know what else to say about this record. There is no real way to prepare you for the listen. Just do it, I suppose.
Hits: "Priest in the Laboratory," "World Lock," "Fossil Record," "Clairvoyant," "Line of Smoke," "Carrion"
Misses: "Prostrate" and "Cathexis" are just okay to good for me?
8.5/10
Buy this thing!
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