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Prometheus Burning
Plague Called HuMANity

Crunch Pod

Posted: Saturday, May 23, 2009
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

From one noise label to another, Pittsburgh's Prometheus Burning moves from Hive Records to Crunch Pod for the group's latest release, Plague Called HuMANity. As caustic and as abrasive as ever, the duo of Greg Van Eck and Nikki Talledictorian continue down their sonically apocalyptic path, pushing their brand of industrialized rhythmic noise to the limits of the average listener's ability to bear the aural assault. This writer challenges the listener to find one note, one sequence, one audio texture present on this album that hasn't been mangled or distorted such that one's speakers would begin to bleed. And yet, the production is so crisp that no sound goes unnoticed or accidentally buried by cacophony. Not only that, but there are enough catchy hooks to keep these tracks from being a muddled mélange of continuous noise with the arrangements being the only indications of a structure.

Case in point, "Blackmagick Tongue" pummels out a gritty and acidic bass line that with its steady and heavy beat bears some semblance of an old Nitzer Ebb vinyl album melted in a vat of toxic waste. Nikki's vocals pierce venomous, never once making any inclinations towards actual melodic singing, yet such an attempt would be folly given the volume and crackling distortion exhibited by Van Eck's musical machinations. The same can be said of "Ouroboros Deathride," which is perfect dance floor fodder with its repetitive bass and drum loops, a mid section synth riff so typical of '80s dance music, and with the two band members trading off a call-and-response style of vocal interplay that reminds of Front 242 in their heyday. The title track adds a sense of epic depth and foreboding with its passages of orchestral ambience juxtaposed by those grating squelches of distorted synths and vitriolic vocals, while "Deluge" lives up to its title as a prolonged instrumental piece full of seemingly random noises offset by a devastating and huge-sounding ambient progression befitting a sci-fi soundtrack.

As a bonus, Prometheus Burning also tackles a classic with the not-so-hidden track, "You Know What You Are," a cover of the Ministry hit. Van Eck and Talledictorian remain extraordinarily faithful to the original right down to the arrangement of those famous samples from Platoon and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and that infectious bass line that stomps menacing and monstrous, making it the perfect capper to a grim and brutal album. As one can expect, the only downside to Plague Called HuMANity is its bleakness being so prevalent and the band's style being so pervasively noisy that one might be more inclined to lower the volume than to crank it. Regardless, Prometheus Burning as ever knows how to deliver the goods in blending the sonic palette of old school industrial with the modern techniques of pure unabashed noise and maintain consistency in setting ablaze to a scene in danger of cooling off.