CD-R/free download, Cold Graey, 2007
www.coldgraey.com
Deep within tumultuous static storms, half-heard whispers and indistinct crackles of incongruous melodies teasingly hint at sinful pleasures. The hair rises on the back of your neck as reverberating pulses throb uncomfortably deep within your bowels. Monotonous, repetitive rhythms build hypnotic constructs from which you’ll never escape, confined for eternity to cyclical confrontations with your darkest nightmares.
And then track two, “BAM tale”, takes over and the story starts again…
Stpocold is among the most frightening music I’ve ever heard. It lays waste to any comfort zone or sanctuary you may have imagined you had, exposing every lie you ever told yourself for the self-serving fiction it is. Meticulous application of mutating feedback structures, granular percussive noises and looped tape textures combine in what could easily be considered the answer to modern industrial – a bleak, aggressive and oppressive atmospheric masterpiece that perfectly captures the nihilism and anger that typified the first experiments of the early 1980s that sought to marry an anarchic post-punk attitude with drum machine dance rhythms in the electronic fury that eventually became industrial music as we know it. “What Happened Outside” covers all the elements of this varied and highly subjective genre, fusing classifications ranging from “darkcore” to “bruitism” to “martial dance music”, all on one album. The totalitarian military flavour of the record, too, resonates with the original post-cold war political statements made by pioneers like Front 242 and Skinny Puppy.
Whether you’re expecting pure sublime noise (such as “Holy 97”), harsh ambient (“I don’t need your right”) or even a tribute to electronic legends, Klinik (on “Sick in your mind”), there’s something here for everyone with a taste for a roughly distorted mirror to society. It’s loud, misanthropic and likely to offend somebody.
[9/10]
— David vander Merwe