Genre: Doom / Drone / Sludge / Noise
Side A - Swanox
01 Forests of Pluto
Side B – Scraps of Dogs
02 Nag Hammadi
03 Leave Your Body Behind
The beauty of working for a webzine like HH is that it emphasises, quite forcefully at times, just how big the ‘underground’ music scene is and just how many obscure bands there are out there making the kind of noise they want to just for the love of it, without any thought of becoming commercial successes. It has also redefined the notion for me that just because a band IS obscure it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re no good; over the course of the three or so months I’ve been here I have come across some excellent stuff - however more often than not most of what I get falls into one of two categories: utter dross and varying degrees of average.
Swanox and Scraps of Dogs are two typical examples of what I mean; both of them I had never heard of before and both inhabit that wide zone designated average. Let it be said though that both are competent exponents of the genre and certainly know how to tick all the right boxes – all the required elements are there to keep any fan of sludgy doom happy. Swanox’s side-long contribution ‘Forests of Pluto’ plants itself firmly in KTL territory, going so far as to remind me of the very first track ‘Strange’ on that band’s debut album, exhibiting the same structure, mournful and eerily cadenced notes set against the chirruping of swamp insects which slowly builds in mood and atmosphere until it explodes in tectonic crashes, pained feedback and solid fuzz, shearing off in massive slabs, before once more settling back into relative quietude. Where it parts company with KTL though is that this feels like a premature ejaculation; the climax comes too early and then just fizzles out ineffectually. And like most premature ejaculations there’s a sense of unfulfilled promises and deep disappointment.
Scraps of Dogs give us two veritable monoliths of noise to contend with. ‘Nag Hammadi’ barrels straight in with a barrage of pulverising grind and feedback that grabs both your ears and shakes your brain stupid; there’s even a hint of keyboards and I swear I could hear percussion buried deep in the mix. ‘Leave Your Body Behind’ is rhythmic crunch and white noise, cold winds shearing through the soul, buffeting it and sending it wafting off to who knows where. Of the two acts, Scraps of Dogs is very much the better, if only because the sound is heavier and a lot more direct; this is music that is felt just as much as heard. Aside from that, there’s a sense of more going on and more to engage with here; as much as I like slow-building doomy fuzzed-up noise behemoths of the sort that Swanox indulge in, I nevertheless felt that their effort lacked an essential something – Scraps of Dogs, although not great by any means, had an intangible quality to them that inevitably lifted them above the band they share this tape with.
Having said that though, in all fairness this isn’t actually bad as doom releases go, but neither is it particularly earth-shattering; I’m equally certain that there are outfits out there that are considerably worse. I have no doubt that it’ll appeal to those amongst us that revel in the slower and grungier swamp-ridden end of the noise spectrum, where themes tend to develop over geologic timescales and the music sounds as if it’s being dragged through some unpleasant gelatinous substance. However, despite the so-so nature of the music here I can say one thing for sure though: it won’t be left ignored on my shelf...
As an addendum, I also have to commend the simple but excellent packaging produced by the Caligulan people – a normal cassette box for sure but a black & white cover of trees in the foreground and fog enshrouding the distance, and printed on glossy photographic paper. Nothing startling, but simple and effective. Nice.
