Search - Hair & Skin Trading Company :: Over Valence

A Creeping Sense of Menace

kabalabonga | 03/08/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"My favorite of the bands formed by ex-Loop members after the demise of that band ( a rollcall including Main and Godflesh), HASTC managed to sound as raw, menacing, and aggressive as their parent band in their second release while extending and refining their exploration of the more sinister elements of Loop's monolithic, repetitive riffing. John Wills and Neil McKay, Loop's former rhythm section, keep things bottom-heavy here, but have brought the guitar work to the foreground. However, this release seems more textural and expansive than either Loop's final release or HASTC's first, and even suggests a flirtation with Krautrock on at least one track ("K-Funk). Highlights include the standout massive, multiply-phased, riff-heavy track "Levers", the pulsating, rhythmic "Loa", the aurally onomonopoetaic "Go Round", the hypnotic, propulsive, ourobouric "On Again Off Again", the tonally-driven, skin-crawling, roar-of-the-universe in a vacuum-tube "Carrier Wave", "F.d.m", with its carved-around-the-edges, stop-and-go structure, and "Take Control", a chiming, insistent percussion-heavy piece. Don't purchase this CD with the intention of replicating the experience offered by "A Gilded Eternity", because you will not successfully find it. What you will discover is the sort of variation missing from Loop's vocabulary."