Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Hexenbrutal
Label: god bless this mess records
Release: 2013
Length: 30:37
Rating: 4.2/5
A place mirrors a person and their soul, and whenever I think of Pomurje, I think of mist, mysticism, flatlands and boundlessness, an unmoulded wildness that shows in both words and music. Pomurje is something special, and I’ll admit I’m sentimental about the eastern part of Slovenia, our cramped little chicken on the map of Europe and the world. Goosebumps up, hair ruffled and totally hyped, I dive into every release from the Prekmurje label God Bless This Mess, which perfectly reflects the rebelliousness, genius and vision of the duo going by the name Hexenbrutal. »We listen to what we love and love what we listen to. That goes for the choice of bands and their releases on God Bless This Mess records too. We’re both absolutists and only put out stuff we like, supporting the creativity and authorship of our flatland soil,« write the two main culprits behind this time’s musical disconnect and sweet sonic terror inflicted on the neighbors and all the champions of mid-road, pointless taste, in the intro text for the GBTM label! God Bless This Mess records was founded in 2005. Back then it linked up with various initiatives, musicians, artists and activists, and that built a structure able to release albums and book up-and-coming youngsters, but above all to nurture and look after the quality of Pomurje’s music scene, so that it belongs on the golden pedestal of homegrown alternative artistry. The collective has a sufficient dose of top-notch know-how, tight bonds and unconventional enthusiasm, and it doesn’t sit on the laurels of past events and successes. Nothing is left to chance, then, and part of that mosaic is the story of the band Hexenbrutal, who’ve been breaking the limits of the permissible since 2004.
Whether this is just a musical exhibitionism of non-commerciality or actually a recipe that can only lead to success, I couldn’t tell you yet, but the fact is that it’s a symbiosis of electronics and synths that, instead of pretty tones, spew out brutal doses of decibels and noise this time, with ears bleeding so sweetly from salvos of sonic compost, backed up by organically solid drums, drum machines and above all the compact ideas of the Murska Sobota duo, Dr. Hexen and Mr. Brutal, a.k.a. Hexenbruta. After the album Think Of Me As A Friend, which came out on God Bless back in 2009, it’s now time for a parade of giants, and the catharsis this time unfolds through the thirteen acts of the album Giant. And this record is so punky, noisy, electro-rebellious, alternative to all the commercial crap, including the crap generated by the pool of the alternative. In other words, it’s yet another specimen of Prekmurje-Pomurje out-of-the-ordinary-ness! The worst part is that I simply can’t articulate anything more than an impulse of happiness and elation, all in one breath.
Even though our chicken’s valley is falling apart more and more, and the atrophy of thought and positivity is whittling down the will to create, the Murska Sobota corner is obviously ready for new leaps to a higher level of evolution and conceptualizing music. The nexus and plexus of this electro-organic revolt, pretty unusual around here, is woven around a masked idea that, in all its fullness and grandiosity, can only be known to its creators, while to random passers-by who suspect nothing and sense little it’s a pretty poor and faint picture (I assume that behind the name Giant there’s either a lot of cynicism and a sarcastic note, or we actually have something arrogantly huge …). But let’s get to the music. The album kicks off with the track Loboto. An industrially refined collection of punch and harmony makes it clear within a few bars that there’s no tenderness to expect this time, while Sodomajzer drives a composition of liking straight into the heart in a grungy-punkish way. The mixer’s distortions push the noise meters into the red, and the organic-sounding hard-hitting drums, along with the demonic screams of giants from behind thick mist, come across like penetration on the first move. A sludgy moment of anything but world-weary fury turns into something calmer after a fat helping of noise. Hell no! The decidedly un-softened track 16 is a slightly slower electro enriched with a little more melody, though the eclecticism of a mildly suspended murderous spirit is only skin-deep. Dr. Hexen and Mr. Brutal are only warming up, getting ready for the ominous continuation. The two-parter Tobari 1 and Tobari 2 carries on this story of silence and simultaneous noise. Hexenbrutal are partial to the mysticism of darkness and demonism. There are no flowers, rainbows or unicorns here, and if there are any, they’re stretched out and violated to the brink of existence! The Tobari pair is cold and morbid, a dark and condensed construct of steel-solid rhythm and cadaverously tattered sounds of samplers and synthesizers, which this time generate guttural screams, inhales and exhales of invisible cosmic immigrants from the islands of the Cyclops.
Is it just noise or something more? I lean toward the latter, because behind the superficial smoke screen you can hear a huge number of layers of high-quality sonic inspiration oozing out of all the following tracks. After Monument, the track Owls brings, at least for me, a state of total symbiosis and fusion with the record’s subversive currents. For me, Owls is the peak of the record, and I swap glamour so easily and so gladly for something more destructive and less shiny. Screw the glitter! This time they wouldn’t have worn it on themselves, and Hexenbrutal’s sound collage fits that nicely. After the album’s longest track comes a bit of provocative nonsense. Jesus Is My Tintenkiler is a brightly lit middle finger of positivity raised high into the sky, so you can’t shove Giant into the drawers of darkness or the drawers of total light. Giant is a rainbow of violence and lack of softness, I agree on that, but it’s by no means an inarticulate dose of crap! There’s always room for upgrades and surprises, which Drumtree shows with its vocal inserts and the first proof that behind the roar of the colossi stand two pairs of vocal cords, two brain halves and two thoroughly bloodied pairs of ears that hear music and beauty even in the roar of rotors and eruptions of explosive gases from Hell. Sexy! Postpone postpones the goodbye with post-apocalyptic softness, a sweet intermezzo of escalating minimalism that closes with condensed echoes of distorted guitars, feedback of total flow and fateful elusiveness, which carries on with the punkish number Narko. Rawer than the grinder moments of the eighties, it proves that Hexenbrutal could easily warm up the crowd before a Napalm Death set. Hexenbrutal have the balls to test even what’s supposedly untouchable! APN is a somewhat stretched-out addition here, one that works perfectly coherently and punchily, yet it stirs in many people a wish to cut it off and hit the button to escape far away, which I would never, ever advocate. You have to put in the effort for any kind of enlightenment, right? And the closing act is dedicated to the arrival of the main character, The Giant. He’s a redneck, a minimalist, not a sodomizer, destroyer and killer. This time only a couple of acoustic chords ring out. Alongside you can hear heavy breathing and those few detuned bends of strings and sound waves that make the ominous giant more vulnerable and more approachable. Instead of cataclysm, just three chords are enough this time and the job is done. There’s nothing to add, as everything has been said. Divine!
And it’s with this minimalist finale that I grasp the essence! Mountains often shake, and something utterly insignificant is born. Pompous announcements of great changes, revolutions and rebirths are usually followed by something totally mediocre and pointless, but this time Hexenbrutal have beautifully told a tale of mythical creatures from behind the mists of the unseen and the mythic, the fabricated, the invented. First come the notions of all those who see only the worst, the darkest and the bizarrely bloodthirsty in everything. They voiced the first part of the record. Then there are those who love to fall into mysticism and astrality. They get their dose of emotion here too and, if you like, of primal chi. And finally the realists come into their own, along with everyone with enough patience to actually listen to all of the music. They’re rewarded with a superbly measured product that can only be filed under quality alternative music, which, as it should be, can only be timeless. Excess and revolt, the wizard and the brute, have served up a superb upgrade of their sonic compendium this time, and whether intentionally or not, they’ve also agreed to reveal a little more narrative, storytelling, though never against the alternative spirit. Interpretations are welcome here, not forbidden. So you can be sure of just one thing: music is meant to be listened to with your own pair of ears and brain, not on the orders of professional aesthetes, the only ones supposedly called to judge what has substance and what doesn’t, what’s quality and what isn’t … In spite of it all, I’d only add that with Hexenbrutal, quality and substance were never in question. It only depends on how and when you tackle the matter itself. Giant deserves a successor that can only outdo and upgrade it, and I’m sure the two head chefs are more than capable of something like that! All in the name of (r)evolution and quality, and always in keeping with the boundless, unrestricted soul of Pomurje!
Lineup
Matej Kolmanko – Dr. Hexen – synth, drum machine, effects, noise stuff, vocals, sampler
Iztok Koren – Mr. Brutal – drums, drum machine, vocals
Production
Plueg & Hexenbrutal
Tracklist
- Loboto
- Sodomajzer
- 16
- Tobari 1
- Tobari 2
- Monument
- Owls
- Jesus Is My Tintenkiller
- Drumtree
- Postpone
- Narko
- Apn
- The Giant
