PAINKILLER

John Chedsey (courtesy of Satan Stole My Teddybear website)

This is a challenging album which often seems to keep structure solely by seat-of-the-pants luck, yet there seems to be definite deliberation behind the music. All members seem to contribute equal measure to the music (JOHN ZORN on alto sax & vocals; BILL LASWELL on bass, and MICK HARRIS on drums form the nucleus, with GODFLESH's JUSTIN BROADRICK on guitar, drum machine & vocals; G.C.GREEN on bass appearing on the title track & "The Toll"). And into which category does this music fit? I'd term it experimental, progressive Jazz with hints of Rock, Industrial & Dub Reggae, all melded into a dangerous but magnificent beast. "Tortured Souls" - what an appropriate title - opens the album. I remember the first time I heard this - ony a couple of days after hearing the COXHILL / FRITH live track (which I thought had tortured the poor sax to the point of death) - thinking 'the only way you could force noises like that out of an instrument would be to gang-sodomise the thing with sharpened Rhino horns'. After several listns, I doubt I could describe it any better. MICK's drumming smacks around like a berzerker having an epileptic fit, seeming to drive the torturers ever onward. "One-Eyed Pessary" has more structure, all three musicians filling the air with a restless music which changes shape, tempo & direction at the drop of a hat - a thick grungy sound with the sax fairly laid-back & mellow. "Trailmaker" lasts but three seconds, a cry for help from the Dungeon Dimension. "Blackhole Dub" has WOBBLE-like bass from BILL LASWELL which is perhaps even a degree deeper & darker than the Bassmeister's. MICK HARRIS proves his love of Dub with tight drumming & ZORN's sax flows between mellowy, drifty sound and something brittle, spikey with razor-teeth. "Buried Secrets" opens with a mangled mess of noise, a cacophony of sounds which form into a tight piece around 3 minutes into it, and is one of the more distinctive, tuneful pieces here, although I doubt you could whistle it. BROADRICK's guitar offers yet another dimension to the sound, which still remains PAINKILLER's own. "The Ladder" is another short piece, clocking in at 22 seconds - a manic, thunderous thrash-out thing. "Executioner" varies it's style throughout, opening by sounding as if it were about to become Dub, then spinning off at a dense, thrash-out angle, a massive wall of well-structured sound which dies away in apparent animal pain, again rising with the sax scribbling tiny hieroglyphs upon the air, then collapsing in destruction like a giant robot swan (theoretical), falling from the sky to eager firmament. "Black Chamber" rolls on dark, thunderous drums while cool sax surfs over the top, reforming into another deep dub-like piece with the bassso low it might just be coming from below the Earth itslf, up through the viscera in dark caress. "Skinned" again clocks under a minute, and is a huge thing, a rising thundercloud of noises, gelling into a mad, screaming & kicking thrash-out harkening towards Metal. "The Toll" closes the album, a much slower, darker, more menacing thing, a slow, barely structured piece which soars & screams, held together by the bass & drums which act as dramati punctuation. The vocalist has a voice so grizzled & ragged you'd think he must drink gasoline & eat ground glass. This is the closest piece to either GODFLESH or SCORN yet you still think it's unique - a more moody piece to draw the album to a conclusion.

A raucous album but full of dark, rich gold. The one thing you do feel is, that however good the studio album sounds (and this is powerful stuff), they would be killers on stage!

Antony Burnham (courtesy of the Metamorphic Journeyman website)

Bare naked ladies spanking one another on one sleeve; pictures of unearthed skulls and thrillkill-graffitti on the other. I don't think we're in the Good-Vibration State anymore, Toto. Insert your emerald-stained earplugs: we're off to see (hear) the Wizard of Zorn. "Buried Secrets" pits the Mighty One's squealy sax against BILL LASWELL's deep dub bass and MICK HARRIS's Speedmetal shudder-drums. JUSTIN "GODFLESH" BROADRICK adds occasional guitar-scrawl (G.C. "GODFLESH" GREEN equally occasional yelling). The terrain is physical sound - rock amplification, improv-scraping, "Metal Box" high-and-low-frequency play. Mostly slow, and very amped-up at their end, to get the acoustic effects and harmonic partials: it can of course be played back quietly to hear and appreciate the music without plugs, though they won't appreciate you if you do. Warning: at a little less than 20 minutes (ten tracks, only two more than three minutes), this is a very, very short CD. My boss told me to say this.

ZORN has a kind of pathological inability to present himself in a way that doesn't raise hackles among his peers, or suspicions: is he a real wizard, or a fake one? Consider: he's convinced EARACHE (to all intents and purposes a Midlands DeathMetal label) to put out his records on a regular basis. You judge magic on it's efficacy, not its foundations, sense, logic, morals.

He is also fundamentally correct: this splinter-form, scramble-jangle-flicker music,, this frenetic non-soundtrack soundtrack, is a step beyond 60's / 70's total improv, and not, unlike most other such steps, simply a step back towards something that already existed (composition, sonic sculpture, performance art) .....

The Oz-moral, Toto: wasn't it that what you wanted of the wizard you'd unknowingly brought with you (heart, brains, courage)? And that you couldn't get out of Oz what you were (all too doggedly, Toto) not already looking for? Where's that idea get us?

Hopey Glass from THE WIRE 105