After four albums on Sacred Bones Records (also home to releases by artists as disparate as the world-splitting KHANATE, the goth-proto-punk of LATHE OF HEAVEN and ZOLA JESUS’ electro-pop) cometh the Maggot Mass…
Worry not, longtime fans of PHARMAKON, when we tell you that she’s experimenting with songs structured in a more “traditional” way. First, you must consider what one who has her past output would consider traditional, then you must put even that aside for this journey. ‘Wither And Warp’ ushers in the consecration, ceremonial in rhythm and intonation, a calling forth? Or to? Skitter-scritchings of insects, chattering, a pulsing beat, and she, conjuring from LYDIA LUNCH to DIAMANDA GALAS, reminiscences of NEUROSIS in the use of minimal shifts in tone/tempo to open doors, then step through.
‘Methanal Doll’ begins with a throbbing, gristled percussive snarl, PHARMAKON joining with her own, Iggy Pop at the Grande Ballroom in 1968, yet a sultry late ‘70s Marianne Faithfull flits about in the fog. After a caustic ‘Buyer’s Remorse’ harangue, all nails-on-chalkboard screech invoking a scrapyard poetry slam, ‘Splendid Isolation’ rises from the junkheap. Sonically almost martial, nearly militaristic in its foundational rhythm, THE MOON LAY HIDDEN BENEATH THE CLOUD comes to mind, and all the while PHARMAKON’s warbled warlike voice spits-near-splits and fires black metal salvos of raw emotion into the ears and mind, then heart. “One and the same. One and the same. One and the same!”
At just over 10 minutes, closer ‘Oiled Animals’ is where PHARMAKON thrives, jazz poetry in utter ache and spite against the multitudinous systems and global constructs that strive to bar our way to the Earth herself, to air, trees, water, animals; to the connection with that ever-pulse that runs through Nature as a whole. This is a reclaiming of what has always been ours, and to which we belong. Life. Death. Life.
Hail the Maggot Mass.
Review By: Lord Randall
PHARMAKON
Maggot Mass
Sacred Bones Records