The Bastard Noise – A Culture Of Monsters (Deep Six Records)
When considering contemporary music, much of which has come to rely on dissonance and traditionally non-musical sound, the question sometimes arises of what elements constitute “noise.” Going by the strict dictionary definition of noise as an unwanted sound, any application of the term to music is an extremely subjective measure, and not just in a curmudgeonly “damn kids and the noise they listen to nowadays” sense either. Whole genres have predicated themselves upon elements which, until recent decades, would have been considered verboten – rock and roll’s love affair with distortion and the record scratching of hip hop come to mind. Even as a defined genre, “noise music” – the sort of aleatoric scraping and shrieking of artists like Merzbow and Wolf Eyes – seems like a contradiction in terms. That is, if noise exists as a genre with practitioners and fans, it is no longer an unwanted sound and by definition ceases to be noise. Noisy, perhaps, but not noise.
This semantic argument may or may not provide a better understanding of A Culture Of Monsters, the newest release by The Bastard Noise – but it may have some bearing. The band’s name itself was a sobriquet chosen to differentiate the members’ experimental material from their work in seminal prog/hardcore band Man Is The Bastard. They initially dealt in the exact sort of corrosive soundscapes that the term “noise music” brings to mind. Recent releases, however, have found the band incorporating more concrete structural elements which, though not unlike the oddball brutality of their parent band, could hardly be considered a nostalgic rehash either, forsaking any preconception which could be inspired by the name or the members’ past endeavors.
At this point, The Bastard Noise hardly seems like an appropriate band name, at least not in the hyper-literal sense in which it initially was used. While some of the noisemaking devices have survived the band’s stylistic transition, there is such intense focus to the music that not a single element seems out of place or utilized with anything less than strict intentionality. The band expands upon the musical template they had initiated with their material from a split record with the Endless Blockade – an off-kilter, bass-driven heaviness which spends most of its time settled in a mid-tempo gray area. It’s not quite slow enough to be doomy, not quite fast enough to be thrashy, but the band places a greater emphasis on letting parts be heard clearly than on previous recordings. While there are certainly sonic outliers – the spoken word introduction by Nathan Martin of the late Creation Is Crucifixion or the In A Silent Way-era Miles Davis-style Rhodes playing on “If Another World…” come to mind – the majority of the album sounds like some alternate reality where Frank Zappa overcame his staunch antipathy for punk rock and embraced the genre as a means of adding an element of blunt force to his aesthetic palate.
A Culture Of Monsters is nothing if not blunt. One of the heaviest bass sounds ever committed to record locks in with an insane drummer to plod and pummel. Vocals alternate between a grindcore growl and a banshee scream. Homemade noise-making devices scatter sounds like shrapnel, piercing the album’s intricacy with shards of focused dissonance. Songs transition from eerie placidity to full-on roar with acute abruptness.
The album seems noisiest, in a sense, in terms of its lyrics. All the detritus of the 21st Century – the military/industrial complex, crass materialism, technological ubiquity, the breakdown of mankind’s fundamental abilities to communicate with one another – are thrown against each other in a jumble of loosely-connected fragments. Like some horrific kaleidoscope, they conjure a rainbow made up of all the hues of despair and destruction that loom over humanity. These unpleasant and unwanted ideas are corralled into, and fenced off by, the album’s caustic dissection of the modern human condition. Each song has a subheading which adds a slightly more strident element to the lyrical content. While each is still a far cry from a straightforward explanation, there is a pointed quality which gives the lyrics characteristics of a manifesto. There are recurring references to robot domination and the means by which they subsume and subvert humanity. How literally a listener should take these admonitions is not entirely clear – there is certainly an exaggerated William Burroughs/Philip K. Dick sci-fi feel to the concepts, but this is also a band whose members are known for their aversion to the snares of technology.
It remains entirely in the ears of the beholder to determine whether or not this is as much of a noise album as the band’s name might indicate. It’s a confrontational, sometimes cantankerous, take on ideas most people are unwilling to confront. A Culture Of Monsters suggests that those who buy into a culture of heightened consumption and exponential technological growth contribute, however unwittingly, to the sort of mass dehumanization that leads to mankind’s darkest hours. It’s a message as alienating as much of the music, which provides an inventive take on hardcore that many listeners might find noisy. Members of The Bastard Noise have been creating uncompromising, progressive, and decidedly heavy music for a quarter-century now, and A Culture Of Monsters is no exception. With this newest album, the band manages to shake the foundations of all that is safe and artificial within modern music. While they may not have much chance at widespread success, their music continues to issue aesthetic shockwaves that will ripple outwards for years to come.