Ivan Pavlov outdid himself this time. Remember his album ‘Iron’ which tongue in cheek celebrated metal music? Well, he continues down that path yet again, coming up with even better results this time around. Apparently some of this stuff has been sort of sitting around for a while (“War end War” was written in 1988) so I’m glad to see he got around to recording all of it.
What makes this doubly nice is how he directly references metal in these songs. An actual electric guitar appears in all of the songs, often possessed and distorted beyond recognition in CoH’s trademark technique. If you’ve liked CoH’s rhythmic experiments before, you’ll really enjoy stuff like the opener “Red Square”. Beginning with acoustic guitar extracted from USSR tapes from 1988-1990, it bursts into action complete with chopped-up rearranged guitar.
Songs have slow, steady builds. The guitar only makes what are already strong tracks even better. “Soii Noir” builds up into a frantic noise-riff. My favorite has to be the closer “Satsugaii” which turns into a bizarre hoe-down track. It is so excellent, aggressive, especially the mid-section when it gets at its thickest.
Most of CoH’s contemporaries (especially in the experimental scene CoH works in) lack the humor and range to tackle a project like this one. Employing KTL to do the artwork, Mark Fell working on the sounds and Andrej Kolesov for rescuing the guitar from tape was a wise decision. This works really well altogether, with each song bleeding into another effortlessly. Also, the names of the songs sometimes relate to various metal bands, so it works on that level as well.
Even in the notes, he manages to crack a smile.
“Hail to World Peace and Death to False Metal”
Amen.