Holy fucking shit-eating Jesus, this is the heaviest, most crushing release I have heard all year, and maybe in some years at that. Industrial doom is not at this time a very crowded genre, and it's probably because would-be practitioners would be scared away, frozen in awe, or pounded into a fine powder by this French project. Or perhaps, it is just that this sound is so huge, it simply leaves no room for stylistic competition. Anaal Nathraakh, Khanate and Halo binging on downers with Aborym and Red Harvest? Skinny Puppies chewing on Godflesh in the grips of an Unearthly Trance? Do Androids dream of Electric Wizard? In reality, Tectonics is comparable to nothing I have heard before, and in concept and execution is a truly brilliant release. This is the apocalypse boiled down to 9 tracks on a plastic disc upon which the rusty and fucked-up machines have risen from junkyard crypts to enslave the very concept of music to their megalomaniacal, monolithic whims.
The agenda is clear from the beginning, as "Nietzschean Dynamics" descends upon our feeble planet like some deranged version of the Mega-Maid from the movie Space Balls, but instead of humorously stealing the oxygen from your very lungs, the P.H.O.B.O.S.-tron 2005 simple absorbs all life-giving essences into a black vacuum of total despair and desolation. As over-distorted guitars sustain the atmosphere, the unrelentless gnashing of the machines provides the rhythm for this death-march, over which vicious necro-ranting is layered like the final insult to a fatal injury. Often times invoked in the imagery of industrial music is 'the ghost in the machine', but as tracks like "Gregarious", "Wisdoom" and "Monochrome Red" bear down on you like a steam-roller with a taste for kindergarteners, you begin to be haunted by the realization that in this case, the ghost IS the machine. Even when the guitars take a dominant role on "Monochrome Red" and "Nihil Credo" or the group attempts a more atmospheric track on "Engulfed in Subduction", there is no let-up in the harsh, noisy and fucked-up atmosphere of this release.
For those stoned to the drones or with a keen interest in total sonic annihilation, do not hesitate to grab this on import from Appease Me or the moment Candlelight puts it out in the U.S. come December. This is seriously the most deranged, loud, and physically-draining album I have listened to since that headfucker which Curse of the Golden Vampire put out a couple of years ago; literally I couldn't stand-up straight while listening to it, as the sick and startling bad vibes P.H.O.B.O.S. puts out had me shaken to the core, off-balance, and deliriously disoriented. This album is the aural equivalent of the 'shit-eating grin', it will fuck with you, put you down, pull you up and push you down again. All the while, you will be stumbling and smiling through the industrial wasteland Tectonics evokes, dementedly laughing at your own pain and praying for it never to end. This machine kills everything.

- John Gnesin / aug. 2005

 

<<