Customer Reviews

The Brotherhood of the Bomb

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Imagine the music of Godflesh and Scorn with agressive rhyming over it. Sound scary? In some respects, it is. This is probably the noisiest hip-hop album i've heard in years, putting the scratches and squelches of Cannibal Ox and the like in check. The whole album just rolls with industrialized rolling dub menace. Drive around with this blasting, and you'll just *wish* people would mess with you. Audio intimidation, this disc is one big angry stare. And there's *no way* it's blinking first.

this is a sick and beautiful record, a masterpiece on any number of levels. as an experimental hiphop project it is simply an endgame. this is of course not to say that hiphop needed a bunch of trendy (white) postmodernists to recuperate it (as even the most cursory investigations into Bill Laswell's rather cerebral and empty extrapolations will confirm), but the fact remains that even the best of what is filed under "underground" hiphop is slavishly conservative and ritualized, chained to the the beat and even moreso to the idea of emcee-as-text-delivery-system. where to go from here? do we allow 'underground' hiphop to become as meaningless a marketing designation as 'alternative music' or 'independent film?'

the first of Techno Animal's answers to this question is to stop trying to make electronic music sound like 4/4 jazz or worldbeat. Martin and Broadrick love their machines and do not attempt "lifelike" emulation of conventional instruments. they embrace sounds and textures and idiosyncrasies of timing that are strictly of a machine aesthetic (the over-"swung" beat at the beginning of "Glass Prism Enclosure" is a good example....it has an organic quality to it, but the push on the downbeats is absolutely superhuman, a groove that 'only' a machine could play). the rhythms are thick and dense, constructed from a variety of machines and programs and run through a dizzying array of filters and effects. the bass sounds do not sound like they came from anything remotely resembling a bass guitar or even a keyboard. they sound (quite literally) like test tones pitched-down and pumped at full volume through the smoking wreckage of a blown subwoofer. do we need another hiphop record with sampled upright bass? with analog filter sweeps? moog? nostalgia is a disease, and the day that hiphop producers stop trying to make "proper" music is the day that hiphop will start to evolve again.

and the vocals? the first thing TA throw out is the idea of simply creating interesting backing tracks for their MCs. the music and the vocals are tailored to one another, and the production places far more emphasis on the MC as an instrument than on the lyrics themselves. the standout vocal performance on the record comes early, on track one, from Lumba and Meta-Mo of RUBBERROOM, but you will have to listen to the song five or six times before you start to pick up on what is actually being said. what you WILL notice right away is the extreme sonic character of the vocals and the way they interact with the music. this is the record i WISHED Cannibal Ox or Mike Ladd would have made, a thoroughly forward-looking odyssey that reshuffles the deck and experiments with hiphop at every level, from song structure to the way the various instruments and vocals are arranged in the mix.

the instrumental tracks take the record in different directions, from minimal subs-and-bass explorations that fall somewhere between Scorn and Spectre to Panacea-like breakbeats accompanied by overdriven synths and pitched-down vocal samples. you can hear a lot of the band's previous work in this record-- specifically ZONAL and SYMBIOTICS, if only for the obvious similarities in instrumentation-- but the 'project' is entirely new. comparison's with ICE's "Bad Blood" are inevitable, but the two records are worlds apart, as the sprawling improvisatory and all-too-human excesses (not that that's a bad thing!) of the ICE record bear almost no resemblance to the lean and mechanized wail of "Brotherhood."

the man with no name travelled the land and no one messed with him. why? he was the meanest dude there was. techno animal are the man with no name of the macro dub/experimental hip hop scene. this album is amazing. i would write a more colorful review, but i don't want to. i don't need to. if you like sick hip hop, you are going to get this album. if you like macro dub, you are going to get this album. i don't even want to appeal to anyone not in on the loop. hey, you never heard of techno animal, go buy an n-sync cd, suckah. i work in an electronics store with car stereo equipment. those car stereo guys, they are jaded as all get out. they know their role. get someone to buy something for their typical boom. oh, you know the boom. the boom is what you hear when you car is at a light. there's always someone who's got a 12" in the back and every so often, it makes its prescence known. with a boom. typical, played out 808 garbage that mainstream hip hop just panders to. well, if you got friends like that, just drop this cd in. at first they will think "WTF" when the noise assaults them. then they will check their speakers. unlike normal cd's, that make the speakers bob ever so slightly in and out, this cd will make the speakers flail like they were dying. i mean, speakers shudder like dying animals when this cd plays. those car stereo guys? they're cringing. they're gasping. they've never seen anything like this. oh, nevermind the fact that no one in the store can hear anything other than this cd. they can't even think. the store manager is walking towards your area with a quick pace, 'cos he can't even think with this noise. the stereo guys are worried a breaker may trip soon. customers are gathered 'round 'cos they've never seen speakers dance like this. it's almost comical how a subwoofer will pounce and bounce to keep up with music like this. so rock on, dudes. this album kicks butt. it also keeps me in the nice position of being the weird dude at work who has better music than anyone else. so don't buy it. i like my position of being able to show anyone up who thinks they have a boomin' system that can handle anything.

Saying this is new millenium music is the best description of Techno Animal. You have US (Anti-Pop Consortium, Company Flow) and English (New Flesh for Old) MC collaboration, hip-hop and grind-core. The beats are as deep and dark as any and good for either jamming in your car or in the club. Finally a concept album that is greater than the sum of its parts!

If you like Cannibal Ox this album is for you (El-P and Vast actually appear on "We Can.."). It is like a futuristic alien version of Handsome Boy Modelling School. But where that album was scattered and aimless at times, Brotherhood of the Bomb is focused and tight.

And if you like Techno Animal, check out Ice (one of the other many JK/K-Mart concept beat albums) and some of the more recent dub-influenced Godflesh work (Songs of Love and Hate in Dub, Us and Them).

I have been collecting the strangest and most dynamic rap and industrial related albums I could find for a log time now (and I do NOT mean funk-metal...yuck). However, BOTB clearly takes the cake. In 20 years we will still be able to look back and see this album holding it's own in terms of relevance. This perfectly unites many of my favorite artists and albums:

EL-P "Fantastic Damage," Cannibal Ox "The Cold Vein," Rubberroom "Archetechnology," all of Dalek's work, all of Beans' work, Curse of the Golden Vampire "Mass Destruction," Digital Hardcore "Don't F@#$ With Us," all of Rob Sonic's stuff (on this album I think he goes by "Rob Smith"), Handsome Boy Modeling School "So How's Your Girl," and I'm still researching more music these people made even years later (IE: "The Bug" and "Jesu").

The fact that somebody even had the guts to execute this idea...and then the fact that they chose these emcees, but also these emcees live for the sound of the darkest screeching melodies and ugly broken drum machines shoved way up in the mix until the vocals are pushed into a corner and forced to fight their way out. It's a shame that Rubberroom and Cannibal Ox are not around anymore, but at least El-P, Beans, and Dalek are active, and the groups that are not...well, at least they quit while the albums were hot.

So, this is a very important work regardless of anything anyone says or does now or ever. It will forever stand as a testament to what all of it's participants have always stood for...that whole "Throbbing Gristle meets the Bomb Squad" sound.

Now *this* is what I'm talking about.

"Brotherhood of the Bom" is a shotgun blast of black talon ammunition fired across the bow of a saggy, decaying, elderly hip-hop.

Techno Animal has burned out a nasty, ferocious little beast of a CD that welds its sick lyrics, mad tones, wilds shrieks, discordant little symphonies, takes everything you ever thought you knew about techno, industrial, hip-hop, D&B, and assembles all of it, runs it through a band-saw, and forges a classic in experimental noise-revolution.

Seriously: this is the real stuff.

It's all about the reverb: listen to the mad, crazy, threatening noise of "Cruise-Rubberoom"---the crisp, hellish, speaker destroying Reverb, the dissonance, the crackling Feedback: this is the shrieking, brain-blasted soul of the 21st century, the age of machines assimilating flesh.

Distortion.

Sneaky shrieking cross-cuts interspersed with white noise, white noise amped up a thousand times, music you can cruise around to and watch all the decent, scared little rabbit-citizens of the world get all nervous and try not to stare.

"Brotherhood of the Bomb" is good music to crush, destroy, burn, pillage. If Attila the Hun had listened to Techno Animal, he might have left an Empire destined to rule the Galaxy.

Check out "Robosapien", or the culminating track "Hell", or "Piranha": check out any of the tracks. Let the industrial corrosion flow into you. Get polluted. Techno Animal is the most experimental group out there on the edge, and by slicing and dicing the Noise they have captured the birthing scream and caterwaul of a New, Brutal, Violent Century.

This is music to destroy cities to. Enjoy.

JSG

Words cannot describe how bad this disk is. I hesitate to write more giving somebody the illusion that this album is worth more the thirty seconds of your time. When I received this cd I played it immediately and to my dismay I could not even get through the entire thing. This is a waste of your time and money.