Six years after their none-more-brutal debut, Split-cranium, the d-beat maelstrom of noise featuring Aaron Turner (Sumac, Old Man Gloom), Jussi (circle), Nate (converge, doomriders), Tomi (circle) and Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), are back with a brand new album, the harrowing ‘I’m the devil and I’m OK’. With creeping ambiance (courtesy of Faith Coloccia) overlaying the heavily distorted, punk riffs, ‘I’m the devil…’ proves to be an adventurous step-forward for the band and the ten tracks on offer demonstrate a band developing their own, unique sound.
Opening with a full-frontal assault on Discharge’s ‘Evil Hands’, Split-Cranium waste no time in unveiling their new sonic approach. Liquid keyboards spread across the opening like the first rays of the morning sun, only for super-charged drums and savage, crust-infused guitar riffs to tear it all asunder, leaving the listener reeling in the face of the sheer unexpected savagery of it all. At under three minutes in length, ‘Evil Hands’ still manages to cram an impressive amount of ideas and shifts into its spindly frame before the band plunge into the bizarre, melodic crust punk of ‘the age of embitterment’, a track that draws a line between latter-day Amebix and early Neurosis. There’s something devilishly primitive in the relentless clatter of the drums, yet the eerie keyboard passages serve to add melodic depth and a surprisingly human counterpoint to the icy hell of the riffs. In contrast, ‘Wet shadow’, sounds like an early Napalm Death demo, Nate Newton’s bass the only anchor amidst a sea of cruelly distorted guitar and cacophonous percussion. At over four minutes in length, ‘Ingurgitated liquids’ is another full-bore punk meltdown, Aaron’s unholy roar set against a rampaging backdrop that seems to slide in and out of focus the longer it rattles on, before devolving entirely into the sort of rich, synth-choral backdrop that Faith no more used to enjoy dropping into the end of pieces like ‘Jizzlobber’. Having lulled the listener with a full-minute of ambient noise, the scarifying rage of ‘Whirling dusk’ is all the more horrifying for the contrast and all melodicism is jettisoned in favour of a dirty punk grind that waves a gleeful middle finger in the direction of modern production tropes.
With bursts of static and blissed-out synths, ‘pain of innocence’ sounds like Aphex Twin covering Skullflower, the band employing a sonic scree that threatens to rupture your speaker cones before the full band leap into action on ‘blood boiler’, a more straightforward d-beat punk outing that, strangely, feels muted after the hypnotic and grandiose soundscapes of its predecessor. One of the album’s highlights, for all its caustic rage, ‘death bed – the yellow room’ taps into the primal vibe of the stooges with its angular guitars nailed by a taut bass line. With the album flashing past before your eyes, the searing ‘heavy daughter’ edges so far into extremity that it borders on death metal, albeit the primitive death metal of the tape-trading era, washed with a sticky glaze of synth noise that is as incongruous as it is strangely infectious. It leaves only the title track to conclude the album – keyboards leading from the front, as the band summon the same sense of hypnotic dread that Marlon Brando tapped into on ‘Apocalypse now’, right down to the incoherent, poetic finale. It’s a fitting end to an album that pulls no punches and which leaves the listener feeling like they’ve been assaulted with low-grade poison gas over the course of its thirty minute run time.
Given the musicians involved, it should come as no surprise that Split Cranium’s sophomore effort is a jagged, arty monster of a record. It seethes and soothes in equal measure, the wash of synth adding melodic depth where previously there was only a virulent sonic scree and the result is an album that draws on the likes of Swans, Amebix and Discharge to deliver a series of potent, yet memorable, jabs. Deftly edited so that no track outstays its welcome, the album flows with remarkable coherence considering the chaos that swirls at its dark heart and, for those seeking a dose of coruscating crust punk, there’s nothing that comes close. 9
