Death Factory - Maschinen Unter Kontrolle

Death Factory is one of those old school industrial projects that bases their influences on such legends as Throbbing Gristle and Merzbow, as well as citing horror films as a huge inspiration on his work. He comes off the label No Visible Scars, who are known for distributing artists related to the noise field, kicking it old school and selling tapes just like the olden times.

Now, however, after citing such influences, I can see where they all take place within the guy's music. A lot of it, like all good noise, sounds like radio transmissions from space being shit out through a wormhole, eaten, and then vomited straight back up. Most people would find this a repulsive way to define music, but we are all repulsive people, so it fits us all too well.

And, the release that I am going to be reviewing would be their 2012 album titled Maschinen Unter Kontrolle. And, well, the first song on the album was a pretty huge waste of time. I like noise, I really do, but there has to be something going on with it rather than what sounds like a tape being rewound in a broken VCR and robot BDSM sexual encounters. I mean, that description does sound kind of awesome, but it isn't in this case. I mean, the song does get better around the five minute mark, tuning things down a notch, and continuing on with low-fi noises that sound like either a stampede of horses recorded on an old microphone, or the sounds of bombs being dropped.

After twelve minutes of pure, unadulterated madness, we are thrust straight forth into another fifteen minute loop of chaos called Manisfestation of Fear (Version 3). This was much an improvement over the last track, providing more of a rhythm to compensate for all the noise, but still enough to make that perfect child turn rotten in about .2 seconds. I'd have to say my favorite part of this track comes between the ten and twelve minute mark. It displays a perfect balance of noise and some very faint synth work that was purely awesome. And the sounds of bells crashing eggs on the chaos even more.

And, again, we are set to another long song, a fourteen minute track titled Empire of Sickness. Every single song on the album besides Shatter The Glass Door and Demitri's Delemma extend into the ten minute mark. That being said, I wasn't too into the third track on the album, as it was noise, yes, but it didn't really do much for me. It sounds like a pissed off R2D2 came to town and started malfunctioning, and if I wanted to listen to that, I would just watch Star Wars.

Shatter The Glass Tower is the shortest bit on the album, coming in just shy of four minutes, and it used a lot of echo effects to a very nice and creepy effect. It definitely sounds like something you'd hear in a bad dream. I found myself enjoying this track a lot. After this, we come to Devolve - Shatter The Glass Tower (Part 2 Powermix). I cannot say that I enjoyed this one at all, it was just to singular for me. It was like at all times, there was just a single sound going through, and it just got boring to me.

We then come to a live track titled Bulldozer, and, well, as you can expect, the quality wasn't the greatest at all. It was hard for me to get into the song at all just because of the low quality, and there's just way too much static for me to sit here and enjoy it. Whether or not this was meant to be part of the flow is not my personal business, but it really sounded horrible.

Nonetheless, I moved onto the final song on the album, and now I am questioning as to why I'm even calling these songs. Not because I don't like them, but just because this is noise, and I never really quite enjoyed referencing noise as songs. I don't know what I would call it. However, Demitri's Delemma was astounding, perfectly fusing noise with extremely creepy and moody samples from 1977's Beyond the Door. If I was a serial killer, I would play this song while I slaughtered my victims.

And, now, we are at the finish line, with all songs finished, and all that I have to say about the album already said. Now, I do enjoy what the project is doing, and out of the three of seven songs that I liked, I really fucking liked them. The other ones that I didn't enjoy were alright, I wouldn't say they were spectacular, but nor were they the worst thing on the fucking Earth. I am honest when I say that I wanna hear more from this project, and will be digging into their discography fairly soon. Aug 23 2013