Genre: Power Electronics/Death Industrial

Track Listing:

01 J’Étais Pas Volontaire 
0 2 Every Fucking Day
03 Nemesis
04 Right
05 Pas De Revendication
06 Your Own War
07 Un Projet De Révolte Brute
08 Richard, Sans Fonction Sociale
09 Derrière Des Cagoules
10 My Daily Strain
11 Terroristes
12 Free Fire Zone
13 Time Has Come
14 Pas Volontaire
15 Such Little 2 Live 4
16 In2 The Mire
17 2 All Those (I Deem Unfit 2 Breathe)
18 Vichy
19 The Ending

MOURMANSK 150 WANTS YOU…… to go fuck yourself!!

Mourmansk 150 fans can rejoice, as their newest albums fails to disappoint. These masked misanthropes know their craft, yet keep finding different ways to improve and refine their trademark brand of hateful, primitive power electronics. For those new to this active French act, this would be as good a place to start as any.

I was quite amused by the promos and album artwork: children dressed in the band members’ ski masks and M150 t-shirts pointing guns and flinging things around screaming. Very, as they say in Japan, “kawaiiiii!!” However, appearances are definitely deceiving, as this is no playfully childish romp!! This CD is as dark, cold, and calculated as they ever have been, though not without a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor thrown in.

This CD balances carefully between the areas of power electronics/harsh noise and death industrial soundscapes. This CD borrows just the right amount of early Sutcliffe Jugend with a little dash of more agressive Brighter Death Now for a sound that comes as close to any in exploring all levels of hatred, with some humoresque samples thrown in to keep things interesting.

You have primitive, stripped down attacks of unfocused angst, serving as camouflage filling between even harsher walls of mind-stripping cold menace and darker, death ambient dirges. Here and there are even subtle hints of melody, though usually no more than two rumbling deep chords held down to achieve that really wicked feel to the album.

Starting off rather misleading, we are treated to a sample of a little girl speaking in French (main member Christophe Biot’s daughter, I think), before heading into a standard primitive motor drone, supplied with some screams and yells of “every fucking day!!!”

At first, I was prepared for a near-hour long ode to profanity, but this is deceiving. By the middle of the third track, we are treated to a sudden change of moods, and gone are we from a streetfight into a death chamber. Suddenly, deep resonating atmospheric tones, and foreboding vibrations tell us immediately what this album is truly about. We head back into anger filled screams for the next track, but for the rest of the album’s duration, these are more densely layered with other mind-warping sounds, shrieks, whirrs, clanks, and industrialized vocal distortion, as the war machine rears itself again and again for another attack against the festering human plague.

Transition plays a key role in keeping this album in motion, because each track is almost directly juxtaposed to the one that came before it. If one track is a hate-filled blast of white-hot energy, the next will be a plodding, tension-filled horror drone. French radio samples will directly precede claustrophobic walls of smothering electric pulses. Layers upon layers of grating noise will precede quiet haunting ambience and so on. The consistent thing is that the tracks are all rather direct and to the point, with few changes within the song, save abrupt ones.

Like most power electronics albums, this album is meant to disorient, wear down your senses, and finally hypnotize you into sympathizing with the artist’s violent intentions.

Anyhow, fans of Mourmansk 150 will surely not be disappointed. Nothing extremely different, but with an added death-industrial element that will surely please those craving pure anti-human spite!! For newcomers, M150 are a must-hear for fans of noisier/harsher material by Navicon Torture Technologies, Brighter Death Now, and Whitehouse/Sutcliffe Jugend.

The message is bright and clear. Mourmansk 150 supports total war against humanity, society, religion, and YOU!!!