Thursday, January 01 2009 @ 12:00 AM PST
Contributed by: Jack The Ripper



Psychogenic Fugue / Damaged Symphony For Depraved Dementia N.2

Artist: Manufactura

Title: Psychogenic Fugue / Damaged Symphony For Depraved Dementia N.2

Label: Crunch Pod Media United States

Genre: Rhythm & Noise / Electro / Experimental

Track Listing:

01 Aroused Conviction
02 Rape Upon Rape Upon Rape
03 Elysian Fire Enfolds The Lost
04 Somewhere Made For Fucking
05 Indignant Imprints Of Time
06 Defile The Chastity Out Of Your Flesh
07 The Precession Concludes
08 Treacherous Passage Beyond The Ritual Door
09 Beneath My Hands Death Is Love
10 The Failure Of The Heart
11 The Cusp Of Magic Through The Realm Of Sin
12 Dream Killers Vow To Bathe In Morpheus Blood
13 The Absurdity Of Terms and Conditions
14 All Things Must Die

Too often when people want to point up for extreme music, the references become obvious. The reign of metal comes first with its vast legion of anomalies that too often fall into mere clichéd aesthetics, with just a handful of individuals performing really strange and extreme music, disturbance is then reserved for an elite. Perhaps after testing this music genre and countless hours of boredom listening to garbage we can jump to another dissimilar genre if our tongue is dry, our desire is emptied and what we are searching for is extremes. That reign should be industrial music then with their seminal neurotic invocations found at the old industrial school and subsequently inherited and augmented in extremity by Power electronics.

All the perversions converge in there; all the pathologies are expressed, vomited, ejaculated or defecated. The subgenre becomes a rather obvious convergence for depravities and obscenity, some names come and later transforms in legends, but as in metal some are just there for the excitement that comes from believing they are extreme just because they remake what others did or because they make of their mundane lives a living show on perversions and other delicacies. A bait that is avidly eaten by the incautious leaving a tasteless sensation afterward.


What is extreme music anyway? It is not about action outside the artistic section. Burning churches, killing band mates, executing homosexuals or choking adolescents is not extreme music, it is just an addendum that many bands use to create expectancy and melodrama or perhaps as clumsy attempts to express their real pathologies, after all, no real psycho wants to be in jail. Just a few truly sick individuals dare to create this kind of music, so pathology in itself is not extreme, it is just a result from a cultural disease, determinism, and extreme music on the contrary is an exception, an exemplification on the pathology within art. On the other hand psycho-pathologies are not mandatory to create extreme music, although generally only the logic from real madmen sustains their creation. I respect an album like "Filosofem" from Burzum, which established a sound mechanic and portrayed a compulsory sadistic & masochistic attitude inside music; destruction and madness reunited contributing to be the testimony from an epoch.

That is ultimately extreme, but then comes something like "Facta luquuntur" from Absurd and there is nothing particularly interesting or revealing in there, other than a silly, bad written, awfully played, out of tune low fi clumsy black metal played by a troubled teenager that grabbed his "extreme" fame not by the music he did, but from the act he performed out from it, as mere result of his pathology. Burning churches or killing people is not the requisite for extreme music, music & only music does! If extreme music gains its nomination by the result from the exterior pathological workout from the individuals involved, then eventually everything could become extreme. Michael Jackson could be an excellent match for extreme music from that perspective. Extreme music could just be then a contraposition to the statu quo, a shock therapy, a convulsion and a rebellion, but above all the original artistic expression with or without explicit consequences on its predicament. Our expectations are at fault if we subscribe Extreme music to a singular location: "Black metal, death metal, Power electronics" or else.

The thing is the only pre-requisite necessary for extreme music, its extreme sound, lyrics and ultimately extreme expression, something that causes revulsion on the morals and to thwart the ethics of the public.

Manufactura could pass as just another rhythm & noise act, another one in the countless of the so called "virulent, harsh, violent, agressive" type sound, those appellatives merely used to create impact on the public. Rhythm & noise as many other subgenres is filled with this plague of bands playing the same over the same, repeating ad-nauseum the formula that once was great for the genre. Who will dare to say that something Extreme (caps included) like this could be found in a genre dedicated to dance floor and certain sector of the underground youth? But then again, Extremity defies logic; Extremity defies common sense, common grounds and even music sub genres. People, here you have an example of Extreme music within the boundaries of rhythmic industrials. Sickness has taken a root to express itself. Manufactura double album "Psychogenic Fugue" is the answered prayer.

Enough filosocrapy, this album is a must, diversion for the special little people out there wanting rhythm and sickness, industrial music with a very unique obscurity. When I started listening the album, nothing could anticipate what was about to come, after the first song, the unnerving of the senses started, something was anomalous about this music, it was rhythmic noise, plagued with some down tuned frequencies, ultra violent voice samplings on rape, murder and misogyny, dark atmospherics and a hint of melancholic gothic undertones, but in reality this doesn't express anything of what the music transmits in itself, there is something depraved, utterly dark that defies language for its description. Anyway, after the third song I was sure there was a beast what was coming out from the speakers, the music of a talented psychopath. The distorted electro notes grinding like bells from the underworld, those thrilling beats drilling the dark atmospherics that permeates the structure from the songs and that voice ranging from cacophonous chants to mellow notations filled with this decadent and diseased aura.


The variety of the album is another frightening aspect also, somehow ritualistic in the rhythmic section a la Klinik (for example the opener track) with a marked incidence in electro but preserving the typical harshness from rhythmic noise, or the step aside ritualistic and tribal full of noisy undertones and thrilling atmosphere "Rape upon rape upon rape" and then the surprising necrophiliac ballad that comes with "Some where made for fucking". This entrance alone is extreme by all means but above all interesting, submission guaranteed for the listener. These somehow "gothic" undertones appear from time to time amidst the most violently rhythmic songs, almost like a brutal contrast. But the lyrics remain hostile, these "ballads" have a strange atmosphere, twisted, macabre and corrupted and lyrics only inflame more this sensation, love for raping, love for fucking dead bodies, singing all this in a very intimate, realistic and compromised way that makes you feel completely disturbed. You may eventually dance the more rhythmically charged themes as they are highly danceable, but you may be find yourself mind bugging afterwards, wondering what the hell was the singer saying.

First disk has a marked atmosphere distilling malevolence, something not fabricated or prototyped but ultimately real and authentically extreme. Heavy, drilling, deranged intense and grabbing music, intended to submit the listener at will, and it does with extreme facility,

Second disk contains a compendium of remixes with a more marked rhythm sequentiality, these songs steps more directly into rhythm & noise, not typically generic one though as still preserves this particular obscure touch that Manufactura has, but is evidently more rhythmic. Madly unstable, but provokes bone shaking with each one of its addictive beats and threats. Tribal rhythms, buzzing pulsations and drilling beat distortion till it bleeds. This pack is a must!


This is no particularly frenzied music or perhaps not the most "dark" one you can eventually find out there, but there is something that you can't put your finger on when you listen to this, something unquiet and disturbing, beyond the lyrics and beyond the subjugating atmospherics that the work is plagued with. Something vague but utterly real and strong, you can give to this an easy labelling, out of any vacuous moniker... This is extreme music.

"Listen to them. Children of the night, what music they make!"

http://www.HeathenHarvest.com/article.php?story=20081230161323535