(04.06.07) Cold Meat Industry have changed quite a bit over time. There was a point when you knew every CMI CD you heard was going to be a slab of pure rage but things have changed in the CMI camp and they are now releasing a lot of neo-classical and dark ambient. Which, possibly unsurprisingly, brings me to Atrium Carceri.
Full of throbbing choirs, big pianos, powerful reverbed bass-drums and static noise, in some ways Ptahil reminds me a lot of Land’s material, but rather than the large swallowing feeling you get from Land, Atrium Carceri gives you more of a feeling of desolation and utter despair than empty swallowing horror. Plus, rather than the classical sections feeling chopped in the way Land does, they feel a lot more human and alive so it’s clear when listening that Atrium Carceri most definitely has his own way of doing things.
While, as usual for this genre of music, texture takes the majority of the seat up on the bus; there are melodic sections hiding behind the large expanses of throbbing desolation, such as the piano on “Memory leak” or the melodic pads and floating vocal on “A path through rememberance.”
Ptahil, while being very cohesive, is also fairly varied; for example the percussion, choir and bass track “Reborn” manages to keep the feel of the
rest of the album while being quite a different animal and “Meltdown” manages to do the same with its sneering, creeping slow industrial beat.
This is the kind of sound game manufacturers should have as the music to survival horror games such as Resident Evil, although that said I can understand why they don’t as people would probably end up too scared to actually play the game, however, the sheer expansive feeling you get from this CD would make for a superb companion. In fact, I dare anyone reading this to take out a survival horror game, put this CD on and then turn the lights off. See how long you last before stopping because you just can’t cope any more.
While I wouldn’t recommend this CD to my mother as bedtime listening while reading her romance novels, I can definitely recommend this to anyone who wants a sneering lethargic slab of neo-classical tinged with industrial noise.
Ptahil is out now on Cold Meat Industry.
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The Protagonist and Des Esseintes :: Reviews (Cold Meat Industry/Fin De Si
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Sephiroth :: Draconian Poetry (Cold Meat Industry, CD)
