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February 15th, 2007 by Bryan Hopton (Permalink)
Label: Sub Pop Year: 2006 Add Comments |
With 2004’s Burned Mind, Wolf Eyes brought the idea of noise music to a whole new audience. Suddenly, people gave a shit about Merzbow. Without warning, Whitehouse was important. Throbbing Gristle was instantly more than just a silly band name. Everybody and their little brother started screwing around in their bedroom with four track recorders and a variety of primitive noise-makers. The noise “boom” began. It’s because of Wolf Eyes that people like me have taken it upon themselves to produce violent, blacker-than-the-blackest-metal noise. They made it about as accessible as it will ever get. And now they’re back. Well… Not that they ever went away. They put out no fewer than 40 different self-released albums between their two Sub Pop efforts. The point is that they’re back… on Sub Pop.
Human Animal is a balls-out frontal assault on the ears. The album plods along at a snail’s pace before suddenly shattering your senses with squeals, bangs, thuds and inhuman wails, and then it suddenly goes silent again. Wolf Eyes literally remove you from your surroundings and place you in a dark room full of nightmarish creatures unseen to the naked eye. The creatures paw at you, tearing at your ears with razor sharp claws. And then, before you’ve even come to terms with your impending doom, you wake up. You’re back in your room, soaked with sweat, and the CD player is shutting itself off. The album is over, and somehow or another you’ve survived the trio’s half-hour long soundtrack of horror.
Unlike past efforts, which tended to lean towards one side of the band’s sound or the other, Human Animal seems to balance these two halves extremely well. There’s the dark, eerie Wolf Eyes that trudges along on tracks like “A Million Years” and “Rationed Riot”, and there’s the shrieking, percussive blasts of heat Wolf Eyes that tears you apart on tracks like “The Driller” and “Human Animal”.
Without any shadow of a doubt, this was 2006’s best offering in the way of noise. If anything, it proves once again that Wolf Eyes are kings among the modern generation of blood-n-guts obsessed noiseniks.
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