Sigillum S – Cybertantrick Quantum Leaps

Another unusual package from A.A. - this one comes wrapped within a sheet of copper which makes for an unusual and attractive cover and of which there is a limited number of 500. However, these people do not set out to make nice, easily listenable music. This album’s intention is to set nerves on white-ice-fire and to chill you to the heart - and to this end they achieve their aims. The first track, “Mother Sow Giving Birth Under A Lab Balcony” slithers through the speakers like a drugged thug threat, chilling you to the core. “Tox... By Folding The Spine” is a portrait of madness, painted in sound, maniacal laughter, lunatic music, cacophonic noise, all thrown together by some crazed sadist. “Fastened Metempsychosis" is a grating, startling bank of noise. "She Loves Drinking Herself" sounds not unlike EDGARD VARESE’s “Poeme Electronique” with all the pregnant pauses filled in with something black and pungent “Countless Beauty Survivals” thumps through with a continual metal beat, guitar punctuating while some wind instrument severs reality. “Human Chainsaw’ has bright keyboards which cut through the ears & into the brain like something by WHITEHOUSE (although these are so much more listenable while the vocalist cries out the title in as much agony as we, the listeners feel. “Fingerprints Of Memory lmmortality" is a much more grand piece, huge sweeping keyboards shroud the grey landscape while a synthesized brass sound pierces through to improvise itself into a dozen shaped and positions, before dying in a black cloud of dread. “Emergency Is A Process” is a voice loop speaking the title while instruments scatter & frolic over the top, although nothing here is without some danger. “Allocation And Paradox” again sounds not unlike a metal beat type thing - a darker version of something off TEST DEPT’s “Beating The Retreat” album, changing direction, turning uncomfortably warm, then chilly with every few moments. “Nevropolis” is next, an unsteady instrumental piece, which threatens to topple & bring the whole structure down. It’s circus music, but from what blighted carnival could this arise? Maybe not even ARCHAOS deserve this sort of dread. It finally smooths out into something calmer - blessed relief. The album closes with “Mouthwatering God Corporation”, which is structured around a hard beat - synth sounds which have no right to exist in this dimension & should be banished to the land of the Old Ones.
This is a genuinely disturbing album - they managed to create a deep-reaching chill which emanates from the speakers and into your bones. They seem to be good musicians, playing their instruments more for effect than for musical structure. This one should worry the neighbours.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.