Rocket
Sometimes, a little gentle trepanation is what’s needed to broaden the psychic horizons; at others, it’s less optimal than a plain old hole in the head. Temple ov BBV is seemingly all about the downsides; it’s not a happy album by any means, but it might cheer those prone to schadenfreude up, if only on the basis that it’s probably harder to sound less all right than the meshing together here of Gnod with fellow aggronautical explorers Radar Men From The Moon.
Appropriately enough for a record inspired by self-tapping psychedelic explorer
Bart Huges‘s book
The Mechanics Of Brain Blood Volume,
Temple ov BBV sounds like the ensemble are
headbutting their way to a higher state of (un)consciousness through the power of sheer bloodyminded gtr-bs-drms assault that must have set the
Eindhoven Psych Lab a-squirming. Brutal doesn’t really begin to cover it; and while Gnod’s recent
Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine was a masterclass in just how to get from A to
Buttholes in as compact a space as possible, this LP comes on equally strong and hard, if only by different ways and more curious means. It’s like a
roman a clef written by a recently awoken bruiser on a cruise for darkling enlightenment not too long after the drill bit has exited their grey matter, bloodied but unbowed.
It’s not all full-frontal lobe assault all the time; the menacing “Your Party” oozes corrosively like a threat whispered in dark corners, dismissing any likelihood that said gathering is going to remain much fun if these miscreants are invited. “The Other Side Of The Night” reeks
of timeless rage, of bass and drums throttled and smeared by guitar FX that ought to be merely chilling, but ends up somewhere way more horripilating than that. What
Temple ov BBV achieve here is remarkably unsettling while at the same time engaging (in the way that a full-frontal collision might be); conversational gambits that speak of nothing good in the world, that noggin operation remaining the bad taste that covers everything, skulls referenced not so much as totems of death as of an unwelcome third-eye opening to unsavoury revelations of “a secret that nobody knows”.
Staggering out on the Acid Mothers-like chantathon that is “What Happens To Memories When You Die”, the LP closes in a welter of strobe-lit repetition and rising visceral ire that seems unstoppable, layering the wordless chorale like a summoning to a final reckoning. There’s only so many holes that a brainbox can take before breaking down.
-Linus Tossio-
Sometimes, a little gentle trepanation is what’s needed to broaden the psychic horizons; at others, it’s less optimal than a plain old hole in the head. Temple ov BBV is seemingly all about the downsides; it’s not a happy album by any means, but it might cheer those prone to schadenfreude up, if only on the basis that it’s probably harder to sound less all right than the meshing together here of Gnod with fellow aggronautical explorers Radar Men From The Moon.
