Navicon Torture Technologies - Your Suffering Will Be Legendary

Having a lot of friends is a great thing. As for me, I cannot talk large about the list of my best friends. But this fact is personal for everyone. Some of us are more socialized, some of us are less. But when you have such a list of extremely talented and bright minded people like mister Bartow has, it would have been a shame not to try to record few collaborations with them and to show the creations of Navicon Torture Technologies in a different light.

Malignant Records label opens the year and hits hard once again with a solid release of the material that was generally released as a strictly limited box set alongside with the album "The Gospels of the Gash". For those of us that were not able to grab this true piece of art wrapped in its original format of the album plus bonus material, there is a great opportunity to fill the void with the beautiful re-edition of two bonus disks as a separated dvd size box. As I mentioned before, this double cd item contains a set of collaborations between NNT and other comrades while most of them are really famous between those who dare to explore a wonderful world of experimental music. You can find the names like Herbst9, Aun, Deutsch Nepal, Troum and others that contribute from their vision of the music and create a solid material of more than two hours, a total pleasure for the ears and soul. I must admit, that the spirit of each of the bands is preserved in most of the tracks; you can definitely hear the specific tunes and influences.

It is really hard to write about each one of the compositions separately. The selection of the tracks and their order makes the listening process very fluent. The first cd starts with noisier sound of power electronics tracks while I can single out here two specific themes that are most delicious for my taste. The second track "Soul Eater" in collaboration with Black Sun is a great piece of old style industrialization mixed with heavily distorted waves of noise and the fifth "Headwound" recorded together with US based Inswarmed falls into the same niche with an extremely dense and dirty sound. From this point the tracks become much gloomier and foggy. I really liked "An Exercise in Pain" which reminded me a little bit of Troum's "Darve Sh" album where Autoclav1.1 contributes a massive rhythmicity. And of course as a top of the cream comes a highlight "Eclipsed by a Blue Star" with Herbst9, a deep ritualistic composition full of mystery and evil occult atmosphere driven by a distant drum beat, a true masterpiece.

While I've been grabbed into the depth of the second cd, I discover that it has a more rhythmic structure. Deutsch Nepal injects a lot of poison into the obscure atmosphere of "Victvm Vermis", while Kristoffer Nystroms Orkester puts an accent on melancholic and sorrowful passages in "In the Folds of the Flesh". My favorite track from this part of the compilation is "She Throws Me to the Dogs" which is made together with Prometheus Burning; it presents a heavy electronic beat with a witchery vocals session, a bomb of true energy and wild power. Also, I would like to mention the collaboration with Troum on the track "Sonnenaufgang" which has a particularly wide droning structure and perfectly reflects the regular craftsmanship of those Bremen residents.

To sum up the soundscape, each and one of us that deal with experimental music will find the specific tracks that will push the buttons inside their hearts. I must admit, that there are few acts that I didn't like too much, but they don't ruin a strict positive impression that I have from this collaborative item. For example, "Dumrot" that has a very IDM oriented electronic beat is too weak and plane for such a deep emotional exploration that NTT invites me for. Though, I try to skip this track each time that I run the cd and that is enough to keep the atmosphere alive and without some strange drops of mood. I can state with the hand on my heart, this record definitely has a spirit and I advise you to feel its breath on your highly pampered taste. Apr 23 2013