[Reviewed by: Iaha Crax]
We have long ceased to be intrigued by the introduction of industrial elements into metal music, and lately there is an interesting shift going on, as noise composers are introducing the use of guitars and drum rhythms into their compositions. In this approach, the natural landscapes of doom metal for example are becoming solely the decor of a bigger tragedy, one that is being musically transposed here. Such is the fact that you will not be surprised when hearing how close to Godflesh “Painlust” sounds…
Sewer Goddess marks to a certain degree an apparently new wave of industrial music, which is heavily linked to a historically based sadist form of messianism. You can perceive a cult for technology as the final phase in dehumanization. “Plague Axis” is the productive opener of the album, a catechism operating as a prophecy, making room for the researched personal melody to come.
Being deeply lyrical in their approach, the hard industrial tones are subtly polished with a morbid sense of romance, such as the song “My Grave”, which I cannot help but compare to dirges from Canaan. However, the style of this beautiful artist more likely resonates with a critical new shape of industrial music, a form that is to be re-imagined by each generation, like in the case of the new French novel. “Flog” actually revolves around a “sado-aesthetic” sensibility akin to Alain Robe-Grillet’s infamous “A Sentimental Novel”: glacial doom-glitch rondo movements revolving around clinical descriptions, a supposedly autobiographical turn.
“Black Meat And Bones” assails with a disarming rawness in the vein of Trepaneringsritualen, but with a witty play on guitar and tribal drums, concocting a hallucinatory death worship ritual. The incantatory, imperative “Get The Rope” continues with this clinical cruelty, adding another sadist fixation. The disc’s final track, “Melena’s Mask”, elusive and catatonic, leaves us uneasy and on the verge of an impotent transfiguration, a pertinent conclusion and metaphor for the whole album.
Sewer Goddess – Painlust
Black Plagve, INFECT14
CD/Digital 2015
Santa Sangre 