Scandinavian Noise Manifesto

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The disk so stuffed with clamor and clangor that it took three labels - Jazzassin (Sweden), Bonbon (Norway) and Freak Animal (Finland) - to get it out to the masses. Three creative emissaries from the Scandinavian underground, bringing us scenes from a maul, from the seventh (clubbed) seal and from a room with a view to a kill. But are we ready for the untold terrors of crispy stoneground wheat wafers? Glow-lamps? childs' play! Metal, water, stones, salt, a CAT scanner, a bible? Yawn. But you have to admire Bad Kharma's accomplishment - creating 23 minutes of absorbingly textured activity using nothing but Wasa crackers! Yes, the Swedish crispbread - here "smashed, grated, chewed, crumbled, fx'ed, played on turntables" and even "thrown across the room." Probably with a triumphant, "Ha! Top this one, Nakajima!" You're unlikely to find yourself thinking "A ha! Crackers!" at too many points. Ronnie Sundin is restless and inventive enough that you're far more likely to envision: fuming volcanic vents, poetically gentle rain pittering and pattering down the shutters, closely miked seltzer water and leaf-munching caterpillars, hungry bone-crunching ogres, rush-hour traffic, millitary-band radio tappings, ionospheric repartee, dead-station electrical snow, shellings heard from a welcome distance - and scouring atomic blasts experienced from within less-healthful proximity. But don't allow such "penguin on a purple iceberg" insinuations to alter your own impressions. Quite ingenious and very, very amusing. Off to Norway for a little standard noise-sport with Lasse Marhaug. He slaps Incapacitants in the karaoke deck and a fresh tape in the recorder during a show in Trondheim (feral outbursts: Kim X-Mazz), settles into Merzbow's autopilot-mode with fairly bracing results ("Polar Circles"), takes the 'voice and violence' raree on the road - earning Marhaug that coveted Throbbing Gristle merit badge at a Bergen performance - and finally douses a reel of "Himmel og Helvete" with molten - almost mellifluously magmatic - feedback. Not a bad show at all. The seven tracks by Grunt are far more troubling. Mikko Aspa's title implications - "Domestic Violence," "Family Life" and "Innocence Kills" - mingle with the Ingmar Bergman-does-Tobe Hooper killing-floor ambience and unnatural abattoir stillness of early Lustmord to chill you to the very marrow. The dull clang of meathooks and the tendrils of anguished screams are just too audible amid the grainy 8mm hiss. Far too "audio verite" for comfort. Imagine piping the audio (not sound) track of "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" through your headphones - for its entertainment value! If Grunt's aim is to rattle, then these macabre vignettes of post- massacre crimesites are all too successful. What began with a chuckle ends with a shiver. Despite he enclosed snapshots (an axe, a noose, etc), Aspa is apparently NOT exploiting tragedy. His music expresses his sincere concerns about the "Finnish Syndrome," confronting those social problems which face his native land - the domestic terrors of alcoholism, spousal abuse, incest and their reprehensible kin - through sound. Fair enough, perhaps even admirable - but the results scrape too close to the bone for listening purposes. I think I prefer to have my noise delivered without a "philosophy." Pass me those Wasa crackers, please. Yep, that's more my speed.