Existence is our exile. Nothingness, our home.
Francesco Di Stasio is the master(ly) brain behind the project Nihil Impvlse as well as the label Interitvs Nvmen – and now I feel like going directly, immediately to the content of this review: the magisterial album Blood Trails Of The Real by the project Filth Colossus. No time to waste; just focus on sonic supremacy…
No, seriously, this album – the sole under the Filth Colossus moniker until now – is like, and I will quote, an aural transfiguration of the vision of an impending apocalypse, on both a cosmic and personal level. And indeed, that explicit expression of both introvert emotions at the one hand, and an universal (cosmic / astral) approach, does work incredibly cohesive and well-balanced. I’ll come back to this soon.
This album was finished and eventually released at the very end of 2020, being a carbonated digipack compact disc (of course, there is the digital option too) with extremely sober yet overwhelming and intriguing (cover) artwork (done by Francesco Di Stasio himself). The mastering duties are courtesy of Sonologyst frontman Raffaele Pezzella (also the demigod behind e.g. Eighth Tower Records or Unexplained Sounds Group, amongst others), and the album consists of five titles. Blood Trails Of The Real clocks almost fifty minutes, which means that the average duration of the individual songs is quite lengthy. But ‘individual songs’ is not appropriate, for the separated compositions are part of one huge coherent journey; it’s just a nominative distinction during a huge aural adventure.
It is not that unlogic to notice that the ‘Music’ of Filth Colossus has references to Nihil Impvlse. Yet then again, there are quite some (mostly very subtle) differences, evidently, for both projects are separated ones. Here too, elements from Power / Dark Electronics, Death Industrial, Dark Drone, Dark / Black Ambient and Ritual Noise have been canalized into a truly morbid, horrific and haunting experience that delve deep into dimensions of escapism, nihilism, misanthropy, alienation and isolationism; post-apocalyptic visions and man’s extinction too…
Blood Trails Of The Real starts with Tidal Destrudo, which opens with a harsh-mechanical vibrating rumble, soon joined by gloomy (church) bells and additional noises. It’s a ghastly introduction for a screechy experience of metallic and mechanic sounds to come next, while these bells and chimes continue. After about three minutes, mesmerizing, even sedative synth-waves join, coming up then again fading away, while the callous drones keep on resonating through spheres of the macabre. This first work evolves slowly yet resolute, as if it keeps the secret key to open a hidden portal towards an utterly obscure abyssal dimension where the air is toxic; a Lovecraftian journey through the Inner Self as climax…
The title track defines the bleakest and most entropic heart of Harsh Industrial Drone in its darkest form. Echoing percussion-like loops, evil tongues, militant rumbles, crepitating gushes and ceremonial electronics get mingled into a sonic expression of some post-human landscape; a portrait of negligence and soullessness. It paints one’s lively horror in colours of bloodred and black, absorbing any ray of light, like a black hole destroying all physical materialization, transforming it through the most nefarious, calamitous tunes from an untouchable immensity. Astral Horror Music, if you want to…
With a suffocative irony, Structure And Decay creeps forward, out of the blackest pits, translating Mother Earth’s vilest catastrophic dystopic future into an eerie dronescape, monotone and lethargic, but importunate and asphyxiating. This is purest aural claustrophobia, frenzy schizophrenia that slowly swells into mental expatriation, leaving no room to respire. Different layers of digital manipulation, an amalgam of cataclysmic noises, grow mercilessly into an experience of deleterious Ambient Music, with ‘Ambient’ and ‘ambience’ being each-others opposite in their definition of audible existence.
Ziqqrat Of Rusting Flesh And Rotting Iron (what an ingenious title) opens with a mesmerizing repetition, like the heartbeat of a distant star deep within the listener’s spirit. Around that monotone layer of intoxicating humming, additional samples and grinding noises climb up, sluggish and heavy, while wretched soundwaves cover the whole in an impenetrable veil of terrifying, stupor-laden, even morose Dark Ambient. When the vocal samples join, visions of lifeless dimensions and dystopian spheres seem to get real, accompanying the listener beyond the edge of mortal reality.
Like an irreversible apotheosis, the last arrangement enters the realm of brute, severe Electronica, with impious synth-molestation, militant and monolithic beatings and both static and explosive Harsh Noise details. A Myth So Deep To Skin comes with a martial attitude, defined by these merciless beats at the one hand, yet also the almost meditative keyboard-waves towards the end, which are not that unusual as supplemental element on a Martial Industrial record (for what it’s worth). About the same goes for the additional spoken samples, carefully woven through the sonic gauze of destruction and finality. At first there are hints of inauspicious textures, yet soon the whole transmutes into eruptive deconstructions.
Blood Trails Of The Real paints a ‘dehumanized and sterile landscape, for a journey where neither truth nor solace shall be found. But through the cracks of our reality [] blood trails of the real, inhumane and indifferent, may be seen’. In a mostly organic and coherent manner, the different stylistic elements are fused into one colossal, deluging sonic experience without the littlest moment of admitting defeat. Magisterial material for the brave, the sick, the divergent…
https://filthcolossus.bandcamp.com/album/blood-trails-of-the-real
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/nihil-impvlse
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/nihil-impvlse-0