It’s been over four years since …(something) ruined unleashed their debut EP, bearing the utilitarian self-explanatory title of EP.
Absent from the live circuit, one may be forgiven for thinking that that was it. But no.
Seemingly out of nowhere, today sees the arrival of a new release, a AA-sided single, containing two slabs of truly brutal anti-corporate, antagonistic, antisocial, annihilative noise.
Prepare to be ruined.
AA
Greek grindcore veterans Head Cleaner (not to be confused with 90s UK noise act Headcleaner) have just shared a music video for a brand new song off their fourth full-length album The Extreme Sound Of Truth, which is set to be released on September 8th via Vinyl Store Gr.
Titled ‘Not Like All Of You’, this music video was directed by Jim Evgenidis.
Watch it here:
Featuring 11 tracks in almost 25 minutes, Head Cleaner waste no time and remain persistent and ferocious throughout. Tracks like ‘Cold Machines’ and ‘Mass Production Dream’ are just two of the album’s most relentlessly devastating, featuring powerful, furious riffs and inhuman, rapid-fire blast beats, while tracks like ‘Not Like All Of You’ and ‘For Tomorrow’s Lesson’ show a more mid-paced stomp, containing intense grooves and crushing riffs while maintaining the same level of severity. Pre-orders are now available here.
Hailing from Thessaloniki, Head Cleaner have been an important part of the city’s extreme underground scene for the last two decades. They have eight official releases to their credit, including three full-length albums and two split albums with well-known bands from the local and European scene. They have shared the stage with some of the most influential bands of the genre, such as Carcass, Extreme Noise Terror, Benediction, Pestilence and many more, while in addition to dozens of live performances in Greece, they have also performed at some of the most extreme European festivals, such as Obscene Extreme in the Czech Republic, Bloodshed in the Netherlands and NRW Death Fest in Germany.
AA
Blang Records – 28th February 2020
It’s a strong title, and that’s a fact. There’s a vividness, a visuality, and a physicality to it that gives it a rare impact. Turns out that this single – the title track from their upcoming album – which is pitched as ‘a furious reverb-drenched and darkly caustic song lamenting a culture of hate and envy that has led to the dehumanisation of refugees, and the disturbing rise of the far-right’, is very much everything that captures the zeitgeist.
It’s got all the edge, and it’s nailed to a stomping single-string riff and goth/glam drum beat and a textural rhythm guitar that’s pure Bauhaus. It dismantles all the anguish of life lived under late-period capitalism and in the all-consuming machine that is social media, the fact money dominates every corner of our lives and the way the need to pay the mortgage saps your soul and steals your life.
Combining nihilism and fury and welding it to a post-punk angularity, ‘Crush My Chest With Your Hate’ has bags of edge, and exists in the same space as Arrows of Love – and with the pricking tension of this release, The Reverse give me the same kind of buzz. Ones to watch.
Christopher Nosnibor
A few weeks ago, before the start of a spoken word night, another performer approached me and opened with the line ‘these people hate you.’ She went on to explain the specifics of why they hate me, citing a piece that was – but wasn’t – about suicide that I performed in August, and how the ferocity of my sets in general were not appreciated at this particular night. I was taken aback, shaken, and rather wounded. My confidence was rattled. It took me some time and reflection to realise that not only did I not care, but was actually pleased – elated, even – that people could react so strongly to my work. After all, it’s not hate speech or anything nearly so insidious, and ultimately, if you’re pleasing all of the people all of the time, you’re not making art, but entertainment.
The reason this is relevant is because Arrows of Love make art. They refer to themselves as art-rock, but there’s nothing pretentious about them or their music. In person, they’re some of the friendliest, most approachable and generous people you could wish to meet. On stage, they’re as challenging a band as you’re likely to see – or half-see: tonight, they play in near-darkness to a depressingly small crowd, moving shadows cranking out a fearsome wall of angular noise that straddles grunge and goth-tinged post-punk. And they don’t care: if anything, they revel in the perversity and play as hard as ever.
Arrows of Love
With more time than usual on account of the original co-headliners cancelling, they dig deep to deliver an attacking extended set which features the majority of the new album, Product. As well it should: while its predecessor, Everything’s Fucked was a snarling, sprawling squall of an album, Product is more focused, denser, more intense, and even more pissed off. The first song of the set is also the album’s opener and single cut ‘Signal,’ a sinewy slice of tension that explodes in every direction.
‘Desire’ is deep, dark, and brooding, and The Knife’ from the debut is deadlier than ever, with added guitar noise and played with a blistering ferocity at its searing climax. The grinding dirge that is ‘Restless Feeling’ invites comparisons to Swans circa 1983/84, and the jarring, grating sonic backdrop is rendered literal as Nuha swaps her bass for a plank of wood and coping saw, which she proceeds to gnaw away at while drums and bass shudder along at a glacial pace. It’s mighty, but hardly moshable.
![DSC_0042[1]](https://auralaggravation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/dsc_00421.jpg "DSC_0042[1]")
Arrows of Love
Nimah would later tell me that he was tired and – on account of having to drive after the show – completely sober, but he still fires into it with unbridled fury, spitting the lyrics like they’re his last words as he’s being dragged off to his execution, and the band crackle with dark energy.
It’s this unstinting, uncompromising, total bloody-mindedness that makes Arrows of Love the band that they are, and as they churn out a juddering, sneering rendition of ‘Predictable’. The only thing predictable about the band is the intensity of the performance (as if to illustrate the point, guitarist Alex, who stepped in when Lyndsey left, is now Alice, who’s perhaps less flamboyant than her predecessors, but still cranks out a mean overdriven six-sting racket), and this highlights the contrast between them and the evening’s support act, Naked Six. The York duo kick out a fiery and energetic set of heavy, balls-out, stomping blues rock with big nods to Led Zep, and having seen them a handful of times, they’re incredibly solid and consistently entertaining. But it’s not art.
Naked Six
Art is dangerous, risky, uncomfortable. With the roaring attack of ‘Toad’ and the tempestuous closer ‘Beast’, Arrows border on the unlistenable, presented in a style that borders on unwatchable, with no concessions to commerciality. There is something about the lack of illumination which renders them even more inaccessible, more untouchable tonight. If Arrows of Love’s latest album really is the ‘soundtrack to the impending societal collapse’, then bring it the fuck on if it means more shows like this.
Aural Aggravation 