The joining of drone metal lifers The Body and club-adjacent noise mangler Dis Fig (AKA Felicia Chen) makes a lot of sense. Despite their instrumental differences, both operate on a principal of pushing their respective sound worlds well beyond breaking point, twisting and rupturing the skeletons of songs into shrieking chasms of noise. They do the same on Orchards Of A Futile Heaven to brilliant effect.
What we don’t get, thankfully, is simply an album from The Body with Dis Fig’s devastating wails atop their usual bludgeoning hellscapes. Instead, their two styles merge symbiotically, folding into each other in a totally seamless way. It makes sense. Both are interesting in creating blown-out, incinerated landscapes of noise, and walking the line between self-flagellation and catharsis.
What this means sonically is that we are in the realm of bass churned and frayed until it sits elementally beneath everything, flashes of hiss and static fluttering like flag in a a storm, and blood-curdling screams. Tracks bide their time, sitting in the hollowed-out embers of low end before surging upwards. Closer “Back To The Water” does this better than any other, letting Chen’s voice sit, expansive but vulnerable, before introducing drums, scratched and blown-out, that seem to close around her, tightening and tightening, suffocating in the most tense way possible. It’s incredibly effective, and the way the track seems to accumulate this density from nowhere without feeling unearned feels like some kind of magic trick.But what is particularly exciting is when Chen brings her club influence to proceedings, as on the magnificent “Coils Of Kaa”, and the tracks are given a less pummelling neanderthal groove as they are here — still thudding, but twitchier, with a more rolling sense of momentum; one which, rather out of nowhere, you could very easily dance to. It’s this element of surprise that keeps the record interesting, allowing the ground beneath to be unsteady enough as to mean moments like in “Dissent, Shame” — when Chen’s voice is layered to expose its gorgeous choral capabilities, lying like silk against the murky throb of synths and noise — to be both jolting and to feel totally in place.
They do a sumptuous job of crafting a broken and tumultuous landscape, but with variety and the crucial streak of real human vulnerability that leads Orchards Of A Futile Heaven to not simply be a hollow exercise in kicking the shit out of the listener. The trio have crafted something far stronger than that, and is a signifier of their immense talents.-Joe Creely-
