LIETTERSCHPICH - I Cum Blood In The Think Tank

Heart&Crossbone is an Israeli label run by Rani Zaz Ben Doom and David Opp, dealing roughly in metal and noise. I stumbled upon it almost by chance some time ago, and I was immediately struck by the exoticism of the whole situation. What kind of “noise” are they conceiving in those latitudes, I wondered? So, after exchanging a couple of emails with the guys mentioned above, I now find myself holding the record by the unpronounceable Lietterschpich.

So, just to get a sense of the territory we're in, suffice it to say that the iconography put together by this bunch of stoned misfits looks quite gloomy, and it could hardly be otherwise (perhaps) given the genres they deal with. Minimal booklets (two pages at most) dominated by dark colors – mostly black and grey – with images that are, at best, unsettling, if not worse… So, having taken a look at them, my expectations suddenly plummeted, fearing I'd run into some ultra-derivative armed band, to be served up to fans of satanic metal crap and whatnot. I was wrong, at least as far as these fascinating Lietterschpich are concerned.

There's a great deal of the apocalyptic in “I Cum Blood In The Think Tank”. Apocalyptic, but with class, as Broken Flag, Ramleh and Toll in primis knew how to be. Desperate screams rising from the most hidden crevices of hell, slow and muddy tempos, almost sludge in certain passages, dull and crude noise beyond any threshold of caution. Yet Lietterschpich manage to work with synthesis, ferrying that sound toward the crowded shores of the new American noise. And the blend couldn't be more explosive.

“Stockfish” opens the proceedings theatrically, with a typically industrial beat, simulating a sort of bestial incest between Wolf Eyes and Cromagnon. Primitivism is in fact the other adjective that springs to mind while listening to these deviant mini-suites. Primitivism in the form of martial yet repetitive rhythms – can't they do anything else? – and layer upon layer of noise, dully identical to itself (“Mud And Fun”, “Malevolent Recreation Celebration”).

Yet within the folds of this so maximalist music, shifting nuances hide for those who know how to catch them. Starting with the continuous shifts of register in “A Horse And A Walk In The Park”, adept at condensing twenty years of industrial/power electronics into a path that runs from Whitehouse to the early Black Dice, passing through Skullflower and Grey Wolves.

And again in the second part of the album, certainly less obsessive, where the metallurgical hell softens into passages endowed with greater musicality (relatively speaking…) such as “Mire Biol”, “Celebration Segregation” and “One Thing Led Me To The Hill”.

But overall, “I Cum Blood In The Think” is a downright annihilating listening experience.

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01/12/2007