Indian, on their new album ‘from all purity’, don’t so much make music as bleed it out through their pores. Described as “noise nihilists”, their chaotic, doom-soaked trawl through the filthy underbelly of human existence is a blackened frenzy of arcing feedback, slow-motion eddies of noise and throat-haemorrhaging screams that tear at the very essence of the being. Repetitive, streaked through with black bile and infused with a sense of rage and malice, its closest relations are the early works of Swans, when the band’s live performances were liable to end with Gira stripped naked and rolling in broken glass as the music bled from the stage behind him, and the unhinged outpourings of Khanate.
Opening with the seven minute exercise in attrition that is ‘rape’, Indian unleash a torrent of noise that draws from the patient might of doom, the atmospheric horrors of black metal and the gore-streaked vocals of Attila Csihar. It is music stripped of its pretence and artifice, commercial concerns banished to the void leaving only the heartfelt orations and slow-motion metronomic beat as your guides through the layers of distortion and feedback. It is oppressive, horrifying and enervating and for the uninitiated the sort of horrific white noise assault destined to leave you grey haired and in a state of nervous exhaustion. Second track ‘the impetus bleeds’ opens amid a churning mess of guitars which slowly coalesces into a recognisably doom-orientated riff underpinned by a throbbing bass that seems to emanate from somewhere near the very core of the earth. Over this impressive backdrop, the vocals tear and scratch, clawing their way into your consciousness as they pile up into multi-tiered howls of rage and despair. The music bubbles and broils like the churning, viscous fluid found in a blackened pit, noxious gasses seeping to the surface as lightning crashes all around. It’s a heady, toxic brew that should poison the soul and crush the senses and yet the sheer animal rage which pulses at its heart keeps you hooked and even excited by what is taking place, the adrenalin flowing even as the darkness closes around you and all hope seems lost.
‘Directional’, staggers in a haze of distorter guitar and fluctuating static, building an almost palpable sense of suspense that intensifies as the hypnotic, pulverizing, slow-motion assault of the drums comes into focus. Drawing their strength from the nihilistic rage of khanate, it is doom taken to its logical conclusion, a pit of despair so deep and utterly impenetrable that no light could ever escape from its stygian depths. Yet, the music, exquisitely extreme as it is, is not repellent, indeed the quality that raises Indian to the genius level is that the music draws you in, beckoning with a bony finger until you’re firmly lodged within its grasp and the tortured screams echo from all around you. ‘Rhetoric of No’ rips you from the eerie reverie of ‘directional’ with an up-tempo beat and cracked, mutated riffs all whirling around the screaming demon that resides at the centre of the chaos. It is searing, brutal and quite deranged and it ensures the album does not become bogged down in a mire of blackened psychedelia. The shortest track by some way, ‘Clarify’ opens with a squeal of feedback that penetrates the eardrums and drills straight into the centre of your skull. Like Sonic Youth at their most extreme and if they took to playing Burzum covers, it is an atmospheric abomination that leaves you gasping with the cold. Mercifully it ends after a bare four minutes and leaves you blinking under the ferocious glare of ‘Disambiguation’, the album’s closing seven minute exercise in churning misery, all drone guitar, arcing feedback and even a picked melody line that gives the song extra power when the scarring vocals are unleashed atop a riff that sounds like the band stacked a wall of Orange amps about a mile high and recorded the ensuing cataclysmic noise.
Over the years there have been comparatively few bands who have so successfully captured the line between brutalised extremity and hypnotic grandeur. The Swans are one such band, Khanate was another and Sunn 0))) have made it into an art form, but there is no doubt that to these hallowed ranks Indian can now be added. ‘From all purity’ is an album that surely is for a brave but devoted few and certainly SonicAbuse would not be so gauche as to recommend it to everyone. It is an album that requires patience and understanding and, yes, it is also an album that requires repeated and careful listens if you wish to get the most from it. Peel away the layers of distortion and the multi-tracked guitars and you’ll find a frozen, blackened heart at the music’s core, whilst the vocals seem to be distillations of spite given aural form, but there are also moments of melody and even, in the depths of ‘Disambiguation’, hints of long-frozen melodies buried under the weight of guitars piled on top of them. For those who have a passion for music in its extremist form, the crushing darkness of ‘from all purity’ is an essential purchase – bleak, tormented and presented with a production that allows the music to seep, like slowly coagulating blood, from the speakers, this is surely the pinnacle of Indian’s achievements and it stands tall with the likes of ‘things viral’ and ‘filth’ – an uneasy and quite remarkable success.
Don’t take our word for it – check out the album here:
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