Technological horror, the literal or metaphorical collision of organic life with machines, from JG Ballard to David Cronenburg to Akira, there’s something so compelling (and often terrifying) about the welding of machine and flesh. The jaws of the thresher know no remorse, while the body is destined to suffer in its grip. Such thoughts occur listening to Putrid / Obsolete (Persistent Vision Records), the latest record from Richmond, Virginia’s extreme-metal unit Prisoner.
Welding together crust-punk fury, industrial relentlessness and death-metal power, Putrid / Obsolete is a record that clamps its metal jaws down on the listener in its opening seconds and offers barely a moment’s reprieve.
Lead single “Leaden Tomb” is the musical equivalent of a concrete building, detonated with rubble raining down. A thunderous rhythm section, chugging guitars like anvils, roared vocals and an unsettling 9/8 time signature in the verse push the listener face first down into a certain doom (before a slowed Machine Head-style crawl finishes things off). All in just over three minutes.
Impending doom is very much the overriding tone of the album. There’s an apocalyptic feel reminiscent of Neurosis’ seminal, sludge-metal album Through Silver In Blood. This comes via in the crust-punk foundations, the grimy, jagged tone, the ominous samples that run through the record (like the background of animal or human screams that opens the album) and the triple-attack vocals of guitarists Pete Rozsa and Dan Finn and bassist Justin Hast. They roar, they yell and it all adds up to a feeling that the world is on fire.
And it absolutely rules.
A number of the tracks hover around the seven minute mark, with the especially-Neurosis-reminiscent “Entity” pushing double digits. As relentlessly battering as much of the album is, there’s plenty to keep the listener entranced (as they get hammered into the ground) with drums flourishes like sparks from a careening train and all the dark synth atmospherics layered under the riffing. The above-mentioned track deviates mid-track into a floating plain of whispered vocals and sinister guitar arpeggio before the walls come crashing down in a final, powerful cyclone.
At times (such as opener “Flesh Dirge” and “Pathogenesis”) there are industrial flashes of Nine Inch Nails as the band carves out space for Adam Lake’s mechanised synths, samples and programming (at times augmented by Rozsa and drummer Joel Hansen). There are also hints at Godflesh in some of the rigid beats.
But it’s the combination of the album’s machine-like elements with a gritty animalism (particularly apparent in the Napalm Death evoking “Pool of Disgust”) that makes Putrid / Obsolete so visceral and so powerful.
Whether the band is exploding in crust punk/death metal fury (as they are most of the time), or briefly letting the atmospherics take over, the tone remains consistently bleak and harrowing.
Sounds like a party, right? A really, really grim, feel-bad party and a really great musical expression of the world crumbling to pieces.
Buy the album here:
https://prisoner.bandcamp.com/album/putrid-obsolete
9 / 10
TOM OSMAN