Halo - Body Of Light

Second Relapse album for Australian industrial/noise/sludge duo Halo after the amazing Guattari, and sadly their last release, as they ceased to exist after a series of aborted recordings that they didn't consider satisfactory. The sound is somewhat less chaotic than Guattari and their previous self-released albums, but at the same time sounds more crushing in its more focused approach, making their early Swans and Godflesh influences more prominent (especially in Filling The Empty Spaces With Cash, which could have been a song on Young God). Oppressive music at its best. 2003 cd on Relapse.

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Completely and utterly stupid post of the day: Godflesh's Messiah and low-bitrate mp3s

If you remember my Halo - Guattari post, I talked about the old Relapse records website and how much I loved its background music sample of Tribes Of Neurot's "Belief." So, when in 2003 Relapse re-released Godflesh's then-obscure EP Messiah (originally recorded in 1994, then scrapped for years, then first given out to members of the Godflesh fan club as a 2000 release by Avalanche Recordings) they posted on the site also the title-track, which is possibly the best Godflesh track EVER, both musically and lyrically. The track was encoded in 56 kbps, with the expected tinny drum sound it gave to the track's crushing drum machine, delayed vocals and floating guitar. Despite this, I absolutely loved the track and its totally hypnotic and cold vibe with a slightly dub undertone (for those who don't have the cd, there's also a dub remix of the track), which was accentuated by the shitty quality making it like the aural equivalent of the nth photocopy of something photocopied.  Some time later I went on to buy the cd itself, only to realize that the clear sound of the cd was not so much to my liking as the bad mp3 quality from the website. Well it's not that it sucked, but it didn't really made me feel sleepy, which is for me the criterion for what constitutes good music: If a track makes you fall asleep, then it's good. From then on, I intentionally started encoding albums and songs that caused me drowsiness (Burzum's Filosofem, Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger, Sunn O)))) in 56kbps to see what they sounded like. The outcome was ok, but it reached its peak in Godflesh (the whole Pure album is also like this) possibly due to the drum machine and the guitar sound. It doesn't work as well with heavy tones or fast drumming. So, the bottom line is that Godflesh sounds better in shitty 56kbps .mp3 files.

In support of this claim in this .rar file I've included a 56k encoding and a 320k encoding of the song,
plus a full version of the Relapse re-release of this amazing EP containing 4 tracks and 4 respective dub remixes by Justin Broadrick. This in honor of the old Relapse greatness which has now turned to shit. And to answer the comment of a fella who said that Relapse should resurrect Release Entertainment, I'd day that they actually shouldn't, for in the past 12 years at least the Relapse people do nothing but just ruin bands or sign second-rate groups.

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The full Messiah cd

Halo - Guattari (From The West Flows Grey Ash And Pestilence) cd

I don't like being that kinda person who whines that things in music aren't what they used to be, and that only the old times were good, claiming that Metallica were good only with Cliff Burton or that Lady Gaga was true only in her first 7" and then sold out. Still, it is perfectly true that Relapse Records has ceased to be of any actual interest for many years now. Gone are the times when they had in their roster perhaps underground metal's most interesting bands, released amazing grindcore and made brave incursions into more experimental territory. Who can forget their sublabel Release Entertainment, which was responsible for bringing to the ears of many metalheads and punks artists like Merzbow, Masonna, Robert Rich, Brighter Death Now and so many others? I still remember their old website up to like 2004, black background and green letters, with an excerpt from Tribes Of Neurot's "Belief" as background music that made me always keep an open tab on the website just to hear that sample for hours on end. Not to mention their great mailorder that introduced my punk high-school years to numerous noise, industrial and ambient works.

One of the greatest releases of Relapse was this cd by the Australian duo Halo, consisting of drummer Robert Allen and bassist/growler Skye Klein (also working solo as Terminal Sound System). I discovered this album from a metal zine when I was 16 and it was one of my first tastes of what would be called "drone metal," which at that time I just called experimental sludge (I might not have yet listened to Sunn O))) at that time) and I was blown away by the oppressive heaviness and the totally bleak atmosphere it evoked. The music here is a mix of slow, repetitive rhythms, somewhere between Godflesh and doom metal, with heavy doses of early Swans misery and destruction (the singer could also be described as a mix between Michael Gira and Justin Broadrick), bass-drone stasis, and some more experimental/psychedelic moments to lull you before you go again deeper into madness. But, who wouldn't get into an album taking its title from the great philosopher Felix Guattari, huh?

Halo would go on to release another album for Relapse, Body Of Light, which was a bit cleaner but also more Swans-y, did some tours with grindcore bands and then disappeared. Relapse would eventually become a cash cow through Mastodon, would lose almost all of their good bands, would buy off the Death back catalog and would start releasing crap after crap stoner rock and technical death metal.

2001 cd on Relapse.

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