Mixed, Mastered and laid to rest by Valgeir Sigurðsson and Ben Frost at Greenhouse Studios, Reykjavík Iceland in December 2013. Fittingly, it’s this final track, and not the pyrotechnics of 'Venter' or 'Nolan', which sounds most savage: it’s the untamed, unleashed and explosive finale, as Frost unleashes every musical sinew and leaves the speakers quivering.

Diphenyl Oxalate” once had a melody, but it’s been mauled and eviscerated until only a wall of discord is left. His compositions aimed straight for the jugular, whether via distorted violence in “Killshot,” tense heart-monitor dronescapes on “O God Protect Me,” or as a gracefully harrowing descent — complete with wolf howls — in “Leo Needs a New Pair of Shoes.There's a cello that plays really low-volume in the third-to-last song and it sounds like it's dissonant! Frost also co-produced experimental saxophonist Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare, Volume 3 in 2013, played “fire” on Swans’ The Seer a year earlier, and is an important collaborator for Tim Hecker. It segues into the main riff, a collection of gorgeous synth notes awash in a slowly parting storm of white noise, the fading remnants of some electronic dance fragment framed for one final moment in an apocalyptic future. Predominantly written in DR Congo and performed by Frost, Greg Fox (ex- Liturgy), Shahzad Ismaily and rhythmic overlord, Thor Harris of Swans, the release was birthed from self-induced isolation and a collective desire to excavate inherent truths of nature and being; submitting to swathes of noise with the implicit aim to evoke an altogether transient moment of lucidity.

Sharp, disfigured melodies fight against the might of pounding bass drums and disfigured analog noise, the track’s anti-anthemic ascension bleeding into the festering near-silence of “The Teeth Behind Kisses”, a rare mournful respite serving as a truce between two trouncing battles.Unlike his past work, there are no guitars, piano, or stringed instruments; instead, the 41-minute collection focuses on synthesizers and the heavy percussion of ex-Liturgy drummer and current Guardian Alien leader Greg Fox and Swans’ Thorr Harris. Top Tags Steven Soderbergh nicolas cage Bob Dylan jonathan demme David Bowie animal collective monthly mixtape criminally Martin Scorsese spike lee R. A moment of barely restrained panic as the music parts for a brief time before “the cut” happens sees a thin slice of drone stutter into a stellar tumble of breathtaking synth catharsis, a luminous and all consuming tumult of sound but one that only has a short time in the limelight like everything else.