Review Summary: flush yourself
Sanitation is a triumph of engineering as much as it is pure hubris, sewers are depraved manifestations of the conclusion that humans are simply too busy and important to do our holy business in nature like the honest and pure beasts and instead somehow have no other option but to gouge the earth and contrive mechanical filth labyrinths which pump our piss and sh
it for miles to convoluted fecal temples with names like "constructed wetlands" or "stabilization ponds" or "upflow anaerobic sludge blankets" for reasons that probably absolutely no one can satisfactorily explain.
Burnt Skull agree with all that so they write sewer music - acrid, industrial-polluted noise rock which is nasty and echoey and claustrophobic and veers from putrid sloshes of feedback or vile ambience to sudden surges of grim riffs faster than the flush of a toilet. Despite the gross timbres these parts tend to be meticulously orchestrated and purposeful just like the voyage of waste through a sewer. The stark rasped vocals hit the ears in the same way that the stench of decades worth of built up ammonia hits the nose. The flow is controlled by the percussion which clanks and clatters like worn, sh
it-caked subterranean mechanisms.
Just like any successful visit to the bathroom, at a satisfying 23 minutes long
Sewer Birth is a very primitive and purgative album and would be enjoyed by any fan of the nastier or sludgier side of noise rock.
