Album Details

• Artist: Skullflower
• Album: Fucked On A Pile Of Corpses
• Label: Cold Spring
• Year of Release: 2011
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2011-10-09

This new release finds Skullflower in a funky, foul mood. Whether "Fucked on a Pile of Corpses" was designed to be deliberately confrontational or just an outlet for the band's id gone amok, it works. The legendary noise-masters. Its raunchy pulse is distorted, abrasive and unrelenting. Sometimes it seems like Skullflower put out dozens of records a year, and then sometimes you forget just how meaningful their catalog is in the rock pantheon. This record stands out among their many not as one of their best, but as one of their most unhinged and liberating.

The music is even more in your face than the CD's title. From the scratchy industrial opener, "Hanged Man's Seed," and "Sleipnir," to the lo-fi, minimal grinding of "Viper's Fang," Skullflower seem determined to overwhelm as economically as possible. They are Skullflower, however, so subtlety mixed with abandon is always part of the assault, and they have delivered few sonic kicks to the gut as raw and noisy as "Fairy Knife Hell" and "Tantrik Ass Rape." Something tells me the band had a lot of fun with the titles here, with the title of one song, "Defiling Their Temples With Bestial Lust," being a better description of what goes on here than "Fucked on a Pile of Corpses."

Skullflower are probably at the stage in their career where they can afford a few slipups; their influence on noise, doom, psychedelic and drone is fully documented. But apparently they still not only have ideas to burn, but are still not above causing an outrage or two. Deliberately or organically over the top, "Fucked on a Pile of Corpses" will only add to their legend.

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