Neurot Recordings – 23rd October 2015
Christopher Nosnibor
Over a thunderous beat that’s tribal in tone but industrial disco in tempo, the first chord sounds out like the blast of a foghorn. And so begins the latest offering from Corrections House. Scott Kelly’s supergroup side-project, which sees him working in collaboration with Sanford Parker (Minsk), Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), Seward Fairbury and Eyehategod’s Mike IX Williams which debuted with 2013’s Last City Zero marks a significant departure from Neurosis – and each of the other members’ main projects, for that matter.
If Last City Zero was about amalgamating the parts and throwing in an industrial twist and a dash of experimentalism, Know How To Carry A Whip goes all out on the industrial front, with the result being something that’s mechanised, brutal and exploding with rage.
It’s a squalling mess of serrated metallic guitars grinding over pulverising industrial beats which clatter and clang relentlessly. Guitars are set to stun while thunderous percussion reminiscent of early Test Department thrown in a blender with RevCo’s Beers, Steers & Queers provides a dense and oppressive sonic backdrop. The postapocalyptic doom trudge of ‘Superglued Tooth’ is dark and sludgy: a spoken (shouted) word narrative that depicts dark and disturbing scenes as it trawls through the guts of hell amidst whirring machinery and guitar annihilation. It’s more Controlled Bleeding than it is Nine Inch Nails.
The sonic density corresponds with the emotional intensity, the metallic guitars melded tight against the mechanised skeleton of the rhythm section. In fact, it’s the thumping, overdriven beats that dominate the mix, the overloading sound accentuating the abrasive tone that defies the album. The lyrics aren’t always easy to pick out but the violently nihilistic sentiments are unmistakable.
In context, ‘Visions Divide’ a dark folk shanty of sorts, seems incongruous, but it by no means provides the respite an acoustic track may otherwise offer.
‘Hall of Cost’ is a brutal beast that comes on like KMFDM meets Ministry at their most savage, while the industrial goth of ‘When Push Comes to Shank’ drags the listener into a dark corner and kicks the living shit out of their psyche, while the doom-laden scrape of ‘Burn the Witness’ is a towering monument to pain and anguish.
Know How to Carry A Whip is a furious nihilistic assault. It’s ugly, painful, remorseless. Just the way it should be. It’s the soundtrack to existence, fucked-up, punishing, hate-filled, sleepless. The burn of self-loathing and bloody revenge. Harsh and unforgiving, an album that crackles with electric energy, it shows that Corrections House don’t only know how to carry a whip, but that they now how to crack it, too.
Aural Aggravation 