Iron Lung– White Glove Test (Iron Lung Records/Prank Records)
Unfortunate though it may be, if I had a nickel for every time I could describe a punk or hardcore band as possessing a distinct approach, I'd barely have enough for a packet of Ramen. This isn't to say that distinction renders a band wholly unique (nothing exists in a vacuum after all) or that output marked by easy comparison to other artists' work is an inherently bad thing (plenty of amazing bands sounded like some really great amalgam of one or two other things), but the number of bands in any of punk's associated sub-genres that can't be described by easy comparison to some other act becomes increasingly scant as the years go on. Over the past decade and a half, however, power violence duo Iron Lung have proven to be one of this rule's exceptions. Though their work falls pretty squarely into their genre's parameters, they've eschewed many of the standard trappings of their contemporaries, incorporating discordant noise rock and Swans-style dirge into the frantic thrashiness that characterizes the style.
Though the band's members have often utilized side projects (Walls, Pig Heart Transplant, Dead Language) to explore styles that stray from the core sound they've developed, their newest release pushes out further from its predecessors, to the extent that it can't really be classified as one single album. It contains a power violence release, an accompanying noise album, and a third album created by syncing the other two. The first of the three is somewhat de rigeur, at least by Iron Lung's standards. Many of their genre's tropes are accounted for - the blistering speed alternating with lumbering sludge, or the caustic presentation, to name a few – but, as they have on the albums leading up to this one, the songs possess a graceful flow between their different component elements, rather than simply a succession of fast and slow parts. This manifests itself not simply within the confines of the songs themselves, but throughout the album as a whole. Though it may have been necessitated by the prospect of overlapping another album on top of these recordings, the songs act more strongly in tandem than most punk albums of any subgenre. Each one abuts the other with only the briefest pauses, and the internal dynamics of each contributes to a larger sense of ebb and flow that demonstrates the extent to which Iron Lung have mastered their craft.
The noise album, a single track titled “White Glove Test Finds More Filth,” though complementary, is a whole different beast altogether - even calling it noise isn't wholly accurate. Much of the 22-minute piece is too subdued to fit in with what is typically clumped under that umbrella, and while the whole thing relies almost entirely on discordance, the end result is closer to Nurse With Wound or some of Coil's stranger moments than anything Merzbow ever did. The bulk of the work relies on subtle drones that almost sound like altered field recordings - heavily reverberating slabs of sound possessing a distant-sounding quality, lending the piece a sense of space that directly contrasts the immediacy of the companion album's raging hardcore. From this hushed atmosphere occasionally emerge brief snippets of clangorous metallic power electronics, quasi-martial percussive elements, and hoarsely shouted vocals that lend the music an unsettling, almost ritualistic quality that unfolds gradually, manifesting itself briefly before receding into the eerie sonic murk from which it emerged. Despite being a soundscape that comes off as nightmarish, the work's unpredictability and sonic amorphousness render it a compelling listen, one that succeeds as both complement and contrast to the abrasion of its counterpart.
As for the layering of the two, the results are far more mixed. Though there are moments when the two elements complement each other – especially the manner in which the noise elements fill the brief gaps in between the punk songs and flesh out some of the sparser slow instrumental passages – the two facets often obscure each other's strengths. One of the remarkable things about Iron Lung is that, no matter how harsh and aggressive their music can be, it remains memorable and, dare I say, catchy - after all, not many bands could turn a line like “separate the blood from plasma” into something not far removed from a singalong. This easily overlooked element of their sound is often unfortunately overpowered by the overlaying of noise. Similarly, the subtlety and strangeness of the more experimental elements found on the noise album are easily submerged beneath the aggression of the punk material.
The combination of power violence and noise isn't anything new or groundbreaking within the genre (Man Is The Bastard and Suppression both did it really well twenty years ago), so it's difficult to say that the combination present on White Glove Test is the sort of distinct, forward-looking work that's characterized Iron Lung's output as a whole. The band seems to have shot themselves in the foot by doing each individual facet so well that the combination of the two downplays the best parts of both. This isn't to say the results of mixing the two albums are bad necessarily, there are genuinely great parts present (with a fairly even split between moments that work and moments where the two elements compromise each other's strengths), and the ouput is, on the whole, more cleanly executed than most bands that mix noise into their hardcore. But when a band can deliver quality as consistently as Iron Lung, any deviation from that standard is that much more noticeable.
Though power violence has achieved a higher profile in recent years than it has ever possessed, few of its recent practitioners have lived up to the experimental spirit that characterized the genre's nascent years. When it started, each of the bands that came to define the term were unified only by a dedication to a harsh, unrefined aesthetic left unconfined by conformity. It was only later that the genre took a turn towards the formulaic. It is this cookie-cutter mentality that Iron Lung has continuously spurned. Of all the bands operating within the bounds of power violence in recent years, they have proven themselves the most apt successors of the style's originators, constantly evolving and challenging themselves without betraying the core of their approach. The experiments might not all work as successfully as their sound's tried-and-true core, but both the band and the fans of this sort of material are better off for their having attempted something different.