2018 is really starting to solidify itself in my mind as the year of the split record. Between a recent batch of excellent splits from Whited Sepulchre (reviews for which you can read here and here) and now with an incredible new album released on Hominid Sounds between London noise-punks Bruxa Maria and Casual Nun, it's starting to feel like some of the most cohesive and rewarding front-to-back listens to come out of this year also happen to be shared between multiple bands. I wonder if there is some sort of co-relation there; Is it possible that there is something in the format of the split record — the idea of contributing a piece to a much larger whole, the loose form of collaboration achieved through compatibility as opposed to compromise of individuality, and a sense of accountability to another band — that can encourage each respective act to produce some of the best, most focused work of their careers? While this is merely speculation, Bruxa Maria and Casual Nun definitely go out of their way to prove this theory with an album that sounds like two bands scrapping it out bare knuckle, trading blow-for-blow in a vicious flurry of idea's and sounds, each band pushing the other to their limits and emerging from the ring bruised, bloody, and mutually victorious.
Bruxa Maria's A-side opens with an overwhelming blast of thrashing guitars and screeching vocals that comes ripping out of the speakers without warning or pretense, an instantaneous zero-to-one-hundred of fury, noise, and aggression, and a clear statement of intent from a band that is clearly not here to fuck around. Throughout the two and a half minutes of It's All In The DNA, the listener is barely given room to breathe, let alone gain their bearings, instead thrown right in the middle of a war zone with nothing but a sharp stick and some face paint.
"If you back people into a corner, it's not pretty what comes back. So don't push people who have got nothing to lose. If they've got nothing to lose, you've got one fuck of an enemy there. And you've created it", Bruxa Maria's Gill Dread told the Quietus in an interview following their fantastic 2016 debut record, Human Condition, a statement that rings true as ever two years later, and made especially apparent in Rise, with a track title sounding like a call to arms, and stuttering, tribal drum patterns bouncing like gas canisters on pavement towards some terrible and yet undeniable conclusion. Walls of distorted guitars and chunks of concrete strike riot gear and windshields, a boiling point finally reached with the aptly named People Die in Revolutions, the potential for violence now a promise. No more half measures, clear lines are drawn in the sand in the form of furious, chugging doom riffs that sound like Neurosis leading an army of frustrated and disenfranchised youth, casting off their iPhones and Snapchat filters for molotov cocktails and balaclavas.
Where Bruxa Maria's A-side throws the listener right into the midst of chaos with an adapt or die mentality, Casual Nun create a clear transition to their B-side with a long, slow buildup of static and synthesized sweeps, like the low mechanical whine of some giant, futuristic instrument of death charging up before unleashing utter destruction; a path of ruination ultimately brought in the wake of The Sweet Hereafter's pounding industrial crashes, disembodied screams piercing through a veil of noise and confusion just long enough for the listener to make it through to the next track, sanity still intact. Easy Now Cowboy, doesn't let up on the punishment, however, a thick and gravelly bass sounding like Les Claypool locked in a crunchy, post-punk groove -- before being thrown into a wood-chipper headfirst and spat out in a lethal spray of bone, blood, and white noise.
Crane In The Water brings things to a close with a true sense of finality in a blazing inferno of stoner-sludge guitar riffs and spectral noise psychadelics, sucking the oxygen out of the air and burning the lungs before suddenly dropping off the edge of some dark and endless abyss without warning, guitar feedback and haunted screeches swirling around and threatening to swallow the listener up completely. As the last sustained note finally resolves itself on a short and final buzz of feedback, it feels you've been given permission to finally breathe again; the dust has settled, the teargas has dispersed... And the silence is deafening.
You reach for the play button once more.
Breathing is overrated.