:: Melvins/Lustmord - Pigs Of The Roman Empire

Melvins/Lustmord

At one time lumped into the grunge category, the Melvins, have always been a hard rock band with an experimental bent, being equally at home with haunting instrumental passages as they are with primordial metal. This release coincides with their 20th anniversary. Brian Williams, aka Lustmord, can boast an equally long career in Sound Design. Well known for his work with 80's noise pioneers SPK, as well as releasing his own brand of experimental electronica, he has also worked on over 40 motion pictures (notably The Crow), and is currently working on a forth-coming X-Box game. So it makes a strange kind of sense for this collaboration to take place. Like the nightmarish chimeras that adorn the cover, The Pigs of the Roman Empire is a warped hybrid. Some tracks, particularly the instrumentals such as album opener “III” and the mammoth title track are brooding horror soundtracks thick with filmic suspense. The mounting fear in “III” climaxes with an abrupt segue into the excellent “The Bloated Pope”, a grinding punching monster of fuzzed-up bass, buzz-saw guitar and fearsome vocals. To keep the listener unnerved it constantly changes tack: one minute it's relentless rock, followed by an eerie disembodied tribal chant, then we're hit with a squall of spastic guitar noise which thrashes around in place of a solo. Elsewhere we have unlikely clashes between Indian tabla rhythms, industrial hammer strikes, metal guitar, and demonic grunting (all, believe it or not, on one track: “Toadi Acceleratio”). “Pink Bat” is ferocious thrash metal, and “ZZZ Test” is an example of what a chugging old-school metal band might sound like if they'd been abducted by aliens. This is obviously a collaborative effort, though at times, just as the dub producers of the 70s utilised ska and reggae outfits, Lustmord uses the band as a tool to create his soundscapes which are the sonic equivalent of David Lynch at his most disturbing. This is brilliant and terrifying stuff.