The Body/Uniform
MENTAL WOUNDS NOT HEALING
SACRED BONES ANOTHER MATCH MADE IN THE LOWEST RUNGS OF HELL
CONSIDERING THE BODY’S last album – I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer – cribbed its title from a line in Virginia Woolf’s suicide note, this one nodding to
80s Ozzy Osbourne seems almost… cheery. That’s where the japes end, however, because Mental Wounds Not Healing is an intense and harrowing trip down the psychic shit chute that’s positively dripping with fear, emptiness and despair. After collaborations with acts like Krieg, Full Of Hell and The Haxan Cloak, it’s perhaps with NYC’s Uniform that they’ve found the perfect foil: a band dealing in pitiless self-examination and a blistered sense of urban ennui. Robotic beats, lunging synth lines and paranoiac guitar parts form the backdrop, with the double-whammy vocal delivery of Chip King (ungodly crow-caw) and Michael Berdan (strangled Dalek) capable of making even the chirpiest listener feel hemmed in by life. Standout cuts like The Boy
With Death In His Eyes and The Curse Of Eternal Life could easily plug the gap if The Terminator’s Tech Noir nightclub shootout needed rescoring to accommodate 20 minutes of additional footage where strobe-lit bodies twitched, whimpered and slowly bled out, making this a bleak and utterly unflinching endeavour from two bands pushing the concept of ‘heavy’ to its limits.
FOR FANS OF: SWANS, LEGION OF ANDROMEDA, BODYCHOKE