- Blawan and Pariah are almost as good at metal as they are at techno.
- Blawan and Pariah making a metal record together is a pretty good hook, but I guess the clues were always there in their knack for livewire techno—an extremely aggressive brand of it at that. The two UK musicians apparently originally bonded over a love for heavy music, which they voraciously indulge on their debut as Persher on Thrill Jockey, an experimental label host to other leftfield bands like The Body and Liturgy. The project originally roared out of the gate with Man With The Magic Soap's title track, which hinted at a death metal direction and hit with the ferocity of a tidal wave. But far from pastiche or costume, here Blawan and Pariah sink their teeth into the whole gamut of heavy music, from doom to death to metallic hardcore, with convincing aplomb.
If there's one thing these two know, it's how to translate sound processing and manipulation into ripping live music, which makes Man With The Magic Soap a primarily textural record. The duo also understand how important texture is to metal—different guitar pedals can connote the differences between genres—and Man With The Magic Soap is a feast for the ears. Buzzsaw guitars tear the frequency spectrum like scissors through construction paper, while the drums blast and pound like they're in the room with you. The best instance of this is probably "World Sandwiches 2," where the bellow of a guitar—or maybe a synth?—sounds hilariously like the moo of an agitated cow.
Not that there's humour in this music. The duo are serious, but also sound like they're having fun. Blawan's vocals are convincing, with his croaks and growls suitably vicious on the title track or "Ten Tiny Teeth," which approximates Converge-style hardcore with a truly unreal guitar tone slicing through the spacetime continuum. Lest you mistake Persher for a shock-and-awe project, though, it's actually the record's slower tracks that sound the evilest: "Calf" moves at a thunderous trudge somewhere between Isis and Tool, while "Mother Hen"'s guttural funk and Nine Inch Nails-level production might be the sleeper hit.
Recognizing that the heaviest music is heavy because of the intricacies that go into it, Blawan and Pariah have made a record that sounds more badass than most of today's old-school death metal bands. That's partly because they aren't afraid to make judicious use of electronics—the intense flange-like effect on "World Sandwiches 2" is part of what makes it feel gargantuan. There are splashes of synth and heavy-handed manipulation here and there, used carefully to enhance this music's attack rather than take away from it. Taking a techno skill set and applying it to extreme metal and hardcore without even a whiff of gimmick or dilettantism, Persher have made—and this is coming from someone who follows death metal carefully—one of the best heavy records of the year, in-between their usual paradigm-shifting techno EPs.
Tracklist01. Man With The Magic Soap
02. Calf
03. Ten Tiny Teeth
04. World Sandwiches 2
05. Face To Face Cloth
06. Mother Hen
07. Patch of Wet Ground