Genre: Sludge / Doom / Noisecore

01 Paralyser (Prison Of The Cross)
02 Paralyser (Hammer The Nails)
03 Paralyser (Dub Mix)

Among the cities of the United Kingdom, Glasgow possesses the unenviable reputation of having the meanest of mean streets and the heaviest of heavy industry, a reputation which the city’s meanest and heaviest band, Black Sun, will do absolutely nothing to dispel, however much Glasgow City Council might prefer to remind people of Glasgow’s ‘City Of Culture’ status. Paralyser is the band’s fifth album, following 2007’s widely acclaimed Hour Of The Wolf, and it’s been released by cult Scottish extreme metal / industrial label At War With False Noise as a 500-copy limited edition vinyl LP.

Black Sun have never displayed much inclination to moderate their hellishly intense sound in the interests of commercial acceptability, but even for Black Sun, Paralyser is a challenging and inaccessible listen. For a start, its vinyl-only format means that only music fans who are keeping it real to the extent of still owning a turntable can indulge. Then there’s the structure of the release, which essentially consists of three variations on a single theme, making it seem more like an EP than a conventional album. But if you’re feeling brave, here’s how it breaks down.

The A-side pitches the hapless listener headlong into the deep end with ‘Paralyser (Prison Of The Cross)’, a single 19-minute track opening with bestial, strangulated vocals and a doomy, repetitive riff, the band adhering to their basic power trio line-up of bass, guitar and drums, with both drummer Russell McEwan and bassist Graeme Leggate pitching in on vocal duties in a kind of call-and-response pattern. The pace picks up after a few minutes, with a rumbling bass line and a shouted refrain of “Prisoners of The Cross” – at this point, ‘Paralyser’ seems to nod in the direction of Sepultura’s classic ‘Roots, Bloody Roots’. But then there’s a quiet, pensive instrumental interlude, with a wistful guitar melody strung over ponderous bass notes, and subtle ambient keyboards in the background. The vocals become more tuneful and intelligible, though still pain-filled and hateful: “Get back on your cross, I nailed you there.” At around 12 minutes, the song starts to become noisier again, though with a melodic guitar hook, before the vocals revert to harsh screaming over thunderous drums and a snarling ugly mess of angsty fuzz guitar, the song closing with a squall of feedback.

The first half of side B is ‘Paralyser (Hammer The Nails)’, which was produced by Billy Anderson, famed for his work with such daunting sonic terrorists as The Melvins, Swans and Mr Bungle, and who also remixed Hour Of The Wolf’s ‘Disintegrate To Khrist’. ‘Hammer The Nails’ bears a strong resemblance to early Swans, circa ‘A Screw’ or ‘Time Is Money, Bastard’, with a slamming, relentless beat, brass flourishes, subtle use of background samples and extremely downtuned guitar behind the roared vocals. It’s a very intense, uncomfortable six minutes, with a locked-in, claustrophobic atmosphere which achieves a kind of twisted, despairing grandeur, and this is the highlight of the record as far as I’m concerned.

‘Paralyser (Dub Mix)’ rounds out side B, with Russell McEwan taking control of the production console this time. It’s a crawlingly slow, skeletal take on the ‘Hammer The Nails’ sessions, with the guitar de-emphasised in favour of samples and the crushing, monotonous beat, harking back to the more industrial sound of Black Sun’s debut album Fleshmarket. Godflesh and Scorn fans will lap this up.

Paralyser is one of the most uncompromisingly brutal demonstrations of pure sonic sadism ever unleashed upon the world, and if your idea of ‘heavy’ music is something like Bullet For My Valentine, then this record will chew your fucking ears off and spit out the gristly bits. Black Sun are so heavy that unless someone creates a similarly heavy band somewhere in the south Pacific to counterbalance them, there’s a danger of the earth being tilted off its axis and consequent ecological devastation. And since I can’t really see a band like this being formed under the palm trees of Tonga or wherever, we’re doomed, doooomed, I tells ya!