Christopher Nosnibor
A year on from The Reflecting Skin’s eponymous debut – with a gnarly, feedback-strewn live recording from July 2022 released in September if last year, they’re back with II.
Lead track ‘Irreversible Damage’ is a warning of what this will do to your hearing. It’s the dirties, nastiest overloading, overdriven black racket you’ll hear. The drums clatter away and everything is cranked up to distortion, the snarling vocals just a barking, screaming, growling mess of pain, anguish and nihilism. It’s the easiest-going out of the three on what is a spectacularly nasty work, that goes deep, dark, and heavy all the way.
It was listening to John Peel in the early 90s that was my passage to music of such extremity, via acts like Extreme Nose Terror. At fourteen or fifteen, it opened doors to a whole new world. Then again, The Reflecting Skin sound more like they’re opening doors to the pits of hell. And anything less, well, it would practically be pop music.
II is not pop. It’s pain.
‘Loose Hiss’ arrives in a howl of ear-splitting feedback before getting heads—down on a driving riff bashed out at a frenetic pace and it’s a sonic blitzkrieg that’s all over I a skull-pounding minute and fifty-one seconds.
They stretch the dingy ‘Grimace’ out over five tempo-shifting minutes where a dirty downtuned bass dominates while everything else drills into your soul. If you want heavy, look no further. II is immense.
Aural Aggravation 