Released

Label
Relapse/Release

Reviewed by
Greg

Contact
Relapse/Release



Last Edit/Update
02 May, 1999

Tribes of Neurot and Walking Time Bombs

Static Migration

Tribes of Neurot contains members of the infamous Neurosis and is another outlet of their terrorist noise. Tribes dabbles with ambient and experimental noise and collaborates with ex-Pain Teen guitarist Scott Ayers. The end result is a frightening mix of psychedelic song structures and musical landscapes. Beautiful packaging too. (Lumberjack site)

    Unable to work out whether this is a split album or a collaboration (the later most likely), I admit total ignorance concerning both these groups. I’m curious to know whether these are in fact two separate entities, as the liner notes only give a list of collaborators for the disc, but I’m sure when it comes down to it, it doesn’t really matter anyhow.
    What we are presented with here is an album that has moments of light if you are willing to hit the skip button on your compact disc player. Proto-ethnic ambient slur with “tribal” percussion smacks of new-age mundanity, so the opening tracks are time fillers that would put the most wired sound critic to sleep. The grind guitar in “March to the Sun” plows on for sixteen dreary minutes overlaid with some masturbatory chord licks, lacking any sense of humour or irony whatsoever. It’s all pretty feeble stuff that seems to resonate with some of the other po-faced gore-grind put out by the Relapse/Release corporate entity. However not all is lost, and there are some redeeming moments that appear on the second half of the album. “Origin Unknown” blends some tasteful guitar pluck-loops with some murky dronological electronics and is in all respects rather pretty. “Blood and Water” is mysterious synth smulch interdicted with some electro-acoustic scrapings and tapping’s and manages to remain restrained despite the threat of percussive outbursts. “Edgewood” contains more jangly guitar loops and drones, while underneath some decidedly surreal vocal sample adds a strange tension. “Head of the Scorpion”  reminds me of some of the more lightweight post-rock emerging from Europe, or a high fidelity recording of the Norwegian guitar-noise miester Kjetil Brandsdal, very hypnotising to say the least. If you can cut the crap to get to the cookies, then this isn’t really such a bad album after all. Back to my incense stick altar…