6/05/2019

ROTW: We Hope You Fvkken Hate It!


Andee (obviously Andee, can't you tell?) wrote this review as a favor to eccentric, international metal/noise crew Enbilulugugal for them to use as a one-sheet for their latest blast of blackened blasphemy and goat-luvin' perversion, just 'cause he's such a big fan. Big enough that of course said blast of blackened blasphemy and goat-luvin' perversion has also got to be our Record Of The Week, currently on pre-order but due to be released this very Sunday as a limited run CD-R in DVD packaging via Italy's Non Resurgam Records. So dive in, if you dare...

After five full lengths in two decades, not to mention about a million demos, comps and splits, the metal miscreants in the practically unpronounceable Enbilulugugal return with lucky number SIX (six six)! In some ways, We Hope You Fvkken Hate It is very much cut from the same cloth as Noizemongers For GoatSerpent (2004) or Praise the Fukken Lard!!!! (2015). It’s thick, viscous, dirty and dense: a twisted hybrid of black metal, gore grind, and blown out blacknoize. Much of what’s going on is often less black metal than some sort of sickening black doom, buzz and blast blurred into heaving sprawls of distorted chaos. Sure there are furious bursts of hellish blackness, a LOT of them, but most of the time, Enbilulugugal seem to crawling and oozing through sonic tarpits of distorted crumble and almost industrial sounding crunch. Even when the tempos are cranked, the sound is so suffocated in murk and buzz it sort of bleeds into droned out sprawls of grunting, gurgling chug and crush.

And while this might be the best sounding Enbilulugugal album yet, they manage to find a balance between ‘clean’ production and total demented and damaged WTF disregard for what passes for proper sounding metal in most cases. But odds are if you’re reading this, and likely buying this, then ‘proper’ sounding metal is hardly a concern…

The guitars are doused in crumbling distortion, and heavily processed so they sound almost like grinding blurts of sci-fi throb, the drums perfectly compliment that sort of alien blackness, and while it’s unclear if it’s a drum machine or not, the pummeling machine-like rhythms give the sound an almost industrial feel, the whole thing tangled up into a garbled mutant sludge, shot through with strange streaks of fractured melody and underpinned by undulating sheets of feedback, every single bit of it buried beneath a putrid sonic scum.

The vokills veer all over the place, sometimes they sound like a computerized mouthful of maggots, other times like a pack of rabid zombie wolves, at others, like a broken siren broadcasting blasts of malfunctioning FX and once in a while, like the gurgliest, gruntingest gore garble you’ve ever heard.

Adding to the overall chaos is the fact that most of the songs tend toward entropy, often splintering into some serious free form sounding blacknoize, all abstract blasts and dissonant bleats, like free jazz played by Abruptum. And yet, even at its most chaotic, the sound is rife with all sorts of sonic details, weird samples, what sounds like a church organ, maybe a mooing cow, strange little sing song melodies buried in the mix, shards of full-on harsh noise, not to mention swirling clouds of fractured effects and damaged caveman rhythms. Deep listening reveals more and more sonic mysteries, allowing the listener an unfettered glimpse into an intense, and seemingly bottomless black soundworld, of unknowable depths, a hellish alternate musical reality only reachable via the shamans of Enbilulugugal.

“Lard Of The NekrObese" is a solid start, hewing closer to ‘proper’ metal than most anything on the record, with its chugging, almost classic metal foundation, but its surrounded in a suffocating cloud of atonal melodies and layers of thrum and howl, the sound so distorted it sounds like the speakers are melting. “Torn To Pieces By Rabid Devils” starts out deathly doomy before launching into some seriously sick, blown-the-fuck-out goat metal, but again, laced with what sounds like a horn section, adding a weirdly malevolent melancholy to the proceedings.

“Insemination Of The Drunken Goatfukk” sounds like a blackened Butthole Surfers crossed with the psychedelic black metal paganism of Ride For Revenge, equal parts knuckle dragging thud and totally tripped out noise-psych. “The Lard Is The Life” spends almost half of its running time drifting through a field of fractured ambient doom, bookended by acid soaked shred and shriek. And don’t let the actual acoustic guitar that opens “The Ol Goat Bangin LardSkank” fool you, it quickly (d)evolves into a two minute blast of maybe the most frenzied, fucked up ferocity on the record.

While “Shit On The Kvnt” sounds buzzy and black on the surface, strap on some headphones and immerse yourself into a head-shredding trip that’s weirdly one part atonal dissonant experimentalism, one part chugging, blackened mesmer and one part avant blackened sound collage. In some ways, this might be the best track here, or at least the one that perfectly captures the band’s seemingly constant push and pull between grim blackness and baffling experimentalism, with absolutely no fvkks to give, and no regard for the tropes usually associated with similar sounding artists.

Enbilulugugal’s demented musical damage and sonic sickness removes itself from other black metal simply by being so much more: louder, heavier, noisier, weirder, more experimental, more chaotic, but somehow without losing the thread, that ineffable something that keeps these songs actual songs, and this record somehow an actual collection of music, although it’s right on the edge for sure. This is most definitely not four guys in a room playing sick riffs and insane blastbeats, although both are present in abundance, it’s more some otherworldly sonic conflagration fed by warped visions of what metal can and should be, instrumentation and melodies melted down and mutated into shapes nearly unrecognizable. And while the wish expressed in the album’s title will no doubt prove true for most mundane metalheads, those looking for something way more far out and fucked up will, like myself, will have to (dis)respectfully disagree.