- The American noise underground's forays into house and techno are well documented, yet they aren't the only beat-based genres it has explored in recent years. The scene's myriad experiments in minimal wave and industrial have been just as fruitful—a development that's largely thanks to Dominick Fernow (AKA Prurient and Vatican Shadow) and Pieter Schoolwerth's Wierd Records. Groups that are part of this movement include Profligate, Bad News, Daily Life, Pure Ground, Veiled, Clay Rendering and Humanbeast.
Out of those artists, Humanbeast's evolution is the most dramatic. The Rhode Island duo of Maralie (vocals, effects) and Eli V Manuscript (drum machine, synthesizers) began seven years ago as a performance-art endeavor marrying gender-subverting theatrics to sonic brutalism: handcrafted costumes, abuse of effects pedals, pained shrieking, etc. But gradually (and rather unexpectedly) they sculpted themselves into the outfit heard on Venus Ejaculates Into The Banquet: ace practitioners of electro-punk and EBM with an understanding of pop songcraft that is unrivaled among their peers.
Venus Ejaculates has a classic doom-n-gloom vibe, unfolding like a collection of American Romantic or French Surrealist short stories. Propelled by Manuscript's strapping grooves, Maralie spins macabre yarns bloodied with themes of sexual repression ("Crawlspace"), sadomasochism ("Pearl") and the flesh as existential slavery ("Porcelain"). Her powerful voice, even at its most throat-shredding, has always sounded formally trained. But with Maralie now harnessing her background in church singing, the group's music possesses a newfound tension between the dark subject matter and her searing delivery.
Yet none of these developments should imply that Humanbeast have abandoned noise music. The myriad blasts of static littered throughout the record, the way Maralie filters her voice through scorching delay, the boot-to-the-head belligerence of Manuscript's beats—each of these qualities reflects noise's devotion to punishing dynamics. Instead of going the dreamy route and slathering everything in neo-Gothic fuzz (á la Sacred Bones), Humanbeast opt for a varnish that is bold and clean, spotlighting their love for big, extravagant grooves and walloping bass. This, of course, makes the most sense with the cuts that are the more dance-oriented, like "Chandelier" and the frantically galloping "Baluster." But it's also an excellent fit for the slower, more rock-based material such as "Linen" and "Silver." Both tracks, just like the rest of the album, would sound larger than life blasted through a Meyer Sound system. A shame, then, that 99% of the clubs on this planet would never touch something so strange and menacing.
Tracklist01. Chandelier
02. Nightgown
03. Porcelain
04. Pearl
05. Linen
06. Baluster
07. Crawlspace
08. Silver