Big Black

If we had to draw up an imaginary ranking of the most violent albums of all time, "Atomizer" would surely land in the top three. Steve Albini, the true deus ex machina of the American underground, delivers a raw, hyperrealist work, a precise portrait of humanity's worst instincts updated to the themes typical of the punk generation.

Starting from the heavy cadences of Killing Joke, the guitar barrages in the style of Chrome, and the sickly atmospheres à la Joy Division, Big Black arrive at a strikingly original and inspired synthesis of industrial music and noise, a sound that's abrasive and obsessive at once, one that would go on to influence a multitude of artists and future masterpieces - just think of Cop Shoot Cop and Jesus Lizard.

A gallery of deviants, murderers and maniacs populates the entire record; the most brutal and animalistic human urges are rendered perfectly through the band's sonic gestures. On the opening track, "Jordan Minnesota" (whose lyrics are based on a real-life event), the "unpleasant American" lays out his own personal vision of schizophrenia; Dave Riley's drum machine and bass hammer away relentlessly, while the constant distortion of Albini's and Santiago Durango's (ex-Naked Raygun) guitars creates an alienating effect. The sonic architecture is square, precisely calculated, a prescient anticipation of math-rock.

"Passing Complexion" boasts perhaps the most ferocious distortion effect of all time - the guitar, sharp as a knife blade, repeats the same psychotic riff over and over; you'd be hard-pressed to find anything more savage. Looking closely, the whole of Albini's musical credo is contained in the excessive, ferocious obsessiveness of this feedback. "Kerosene", on the other hand, is more cerebral; the spoken delivery and the thriller-like bass soak the atmosphere in pathos, a sense of imminent catastrophe hanging over the listen. Albini's slashing guitar strikes land right on cue and inevitably, wiping out any remaining hope. Murder couldn't ask for a better soundtrack - this is music for serial killers. The themes are more real and everyday than ever: existential boredom as the cause ("stare at each other and wait till we die"), the aberration of the criminal act as the effect ("Kerosene around, she's something to do").

"Bad Houses" is a solemn, stately nightmare in the style of Suicide, all alienating beats, filtered vocals and guitar that floods the whole space with dissonant, blurred distortion. "Fists Of Love" carries on in the same vein, with Albini precisely and deliberately disfiguring the percussive monotony with Grand Guignol guitar effects. The manic dimension comes through both by slowing the rhythm box down and by cranking the frequency and speed of the instrument to extremes, as in "Bazooka Joe" and "Stinking Drunk", where the masterful counterpoint between instruments forges a malevolent noise monolith, or in "Strange Things", a "simple" exercise in guitar minimalism.

Every track proves nerve-wracking, putting the listener's psyche through the wringer; the sense of powerlessness in the face of the inevitable is amplified by the disproportionate, grandiloquent instrumental ferocity. The trajectory of depraved rock that begins with the bacchanals of the Stones and continues through the heavy metal of the Stooges finds its natural heirs in Big Black. Albini's band pushes the level of musical and moral savagery even higher, depicting the criminal act itself through a cold, calculated musical language, one well aware of the innovations brought by industrial's avant-garde yet drawing freely from the crudest, most primordial hardcore as well.

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27/10/2006