GOPOTA - Knots of Fear

I've made myself a New Year's Resolution this year and this time I may have finally come to regret it. I've decided that - no matter what - each and every single promo that we get in the mail in 2016 I will take a look at and review if no one else has already grabbed it. And, on this day of January 22nd, 2016, I will say that I have picked out GOPOTA's "Knots of Fear" and it is not pretty at all. Not. One. Bit. 

GOPOTA is an Italian power-electronics and harsh noise act. While there are many, many different projects in this relatively underground field, most of them suck. I say this because a lot of those artists think that somehow their relatively obscure music that won't stand to hold with even the most disoriented fucker around is "art". When I listen to artists such as Whitehouse, I understand how their music can be enjoyed and heard. Most other artists within the field, not so much. New age power electronics, to myself, is pretty much Industrial hipster-ism; everyone knows it sucks, but there are a few who will say its good and that others don't understand it just to make themselves feel entitled. 

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. "Knots of Fear" is a nine track album from this Italian act that was conceived by AA and EVP. What those initials stand for I know not, and I do not care enough to look it up online. Described as "violent and pure, raw, with no half measure", "Knots of Fear" does not really make me feel violent, nor does it feel fairly raw. It feels like nothing. 

If I could honestly describe to you what this album sounds like, imagine if you turned the static on a white noise TV channel all the way up to the point you couldn't hear anything else around you. While that's going on, a semi-truck has just flipped over outside your house and is grinding against the ground. All the while, your parents are yelling at you to turn that shit down, but you can only hear their muffled screams. If this sounds nice to you, then, Hell's bells and congratulations, I will firmly place you in the above category of "industrial hipster" and most likely avoid you for a while. 

Power electronics is all about being anti-music, being full of hate and sounding like you want to rip someone's guts out. This sounds nothing like the sort. It sounds like a failed clone of so many other great artists out there. I could describe the album also sounding as if you put heavy distortion on any tape and blasted it twenty times over with pure, unfiltered noise. As metal as that sounds, it isn't. At all. 

Still, GOPOTA is in their early stages and this is their first release, so I will give the band time and not strike them down right away. But, alas, I also refuse to listen to this. Perhaps they will take their sound and evolve it into something more than whatever they were trying to do with "Knots of Fear", because this album isn't a societal strike artfully or musically. 
Jan 23 2016