Review Summary: A good screech.
When I think about some records a catchy guitar lick or a hook is called to mind. In this case, the most memorable thing about
karma and vaseline is also the most obnoxious. The prominent 'sound' is a shrieking, whistling noise over harsh industrial-like riffs and percussion. The record feels as though a piece of grinding extreme metal has been warped into something else by the proclivities of a caustic and depraved noise artist. On that note, the name is itself telling. There's all sorts of 'brutal' names floating around in the metal genre but
karma and vaseline? That's just
sick.
Beneath the distinctive in-your-face sound, there's some interesting stuff going on. A doom influence can be felt when the whistling drops out and the tempo falters. No intensity is lost though, as the monolithic wall of sound opens up and individual elements start popping out – riffs, a full clashing beat and the vocalist's moaning and groaning. A sacred vocal chant-esque droning in “A Dog and House are not the Weather” and “Progressive Fetch of Nod.6” build a brief, bleak, pseudo-spiritual vibe. However, the slower sections aren't lumped together, so there's no real lull in the record and no prolonged outro either. The transitions seemed to be managed so that as one section fades out another jarring blast of noise comes shortly after. I see the harsh, pummelling grind as the core of the record, which is repeatedly deconstructed and then reintroduced at its most violent.
It becomes surprisingly different as well. Towards the end of the record, the music takes on a kind of tour-de-force (tour-de-farce?) with a kind of bizarrely upbeat parade-style rhythm, engaging riff and humming underlying the same ringing, lacerating noise. It's a strong juxtaposition and shows that despite running with song titles like “The Pathetic Realm of All Things Heavy” and “Testosterone os the Devil”
karma and vaseline isn't a throwaway bit of fun. I'd say it gets that a lot of metal's trappings (the idea of 'angry' music and violent preoccupations) are just a pretext and skips straight to the genre's most abrasive and all-consuming extremes.
