Genre: Martial Industrial / Experimental

01 I
02 II
03 III
04 IV
05 V
06 VI
07 VII
08 VIII
09 IX (remix by Kenji Siratori)
10 X (remix by Natja K.)

Grabstein is a new and another phenomena on martial industrial scene among the acts that prefer to pay less atention to melodical elements in favor of noisy and more industrial ones, which makes its music less rhythmical, but at the same time less specific, giving a vast field to explore to listeners’ imagination.

It is a one man project of Paul B., based in Bern, Switzerland. “The Wargasm” is Grabstein’s debut album, hand numbered, limited to 50 copies, issued on German label Skullline, famous for its exclusive designs and packages. The artwork is designed by Natja K. who remixed track X on this album and it looks as if the artist was indeed inspired by this album.

World War II themes will eternally be popular among artists, since it can be regarded from numerous sides and presented in various manners, with the help of different means of expression. Mentioning WW II is permanent: there’re louds of conceptual movies, paintings, musical albums that are built around WWII. Where am I leading you? Simple. This is the album that it dedicated to the World War II as well. It can be called propaganda, but to the extent when we talk about propaganda of awareness – one has to be aware of what has happened not to repeat the mistakes of the past. In a press release it is state that the musician himself doesn’t advocate any particular political system but feels the importance of remembering the events that were and that shouldn’t return anymore.

While listening to this album one can get an impression of watching a movie when the audience has an opportunity to create the video part by itself having nothing but the audio waves surrouning it. The track “II” is the longest on the album and is collected from many pieces. I would call it something like a collage – first we witness peaceful existence which suddenly changes into shouts and distant sounds of machines approaching the place. Second part of the track is radio transition on different languages, the samples are used, the original old samples I think (it appears again in the end of track “V”) mostly in german language which, what a shame, I don’t understand. And the third part of the track sounds very technoid, noisy, ruthless, heavy. Steel and fire are the associations I get. Generally all the tracks are built on speech samples – really different ones, passionate speeches, speeches from radio programs (on german and english, on different topics), samples of music: pompous sympho music as marches (recognised a russian one over there and USA hymn) and lyrical piano passages, academic singing, samples of applause – all those are accompanied by pulsating noise. Maybe “accompanied” is not the best word here, because pulsating, even rhythmic noises are not on the background, but rather on the first place.

This record touches not only the affairs of german army, but american one as well. Track “VII” is presented in a form of radio transmission about US atomic bomb attack on Japanese city of Hirosima. Of course, it is mentioned because back then one of the main fears was Germany’s possible possession of atomic bombs, but apart from that I think this track is a peculiar reproach to the US.

I’d like to mark out the remix by Kenji Siratori not only because it stands out. It is the first time I hear such a mix of EBM with trance elements and martial industrial music and I cannot say anything negative about it, quite an amusing effort to make martial industrial danceable, a bit indus dancefloor oriented. A remix by Natja K. is done in the same direction as the album itself, just it sounds a bit more heavy, not because of abrasive soundscapes, but because of the background which embodies emptiness.