Hierophant Nox

EP REVIEW

Lupus Golem - Minotaure
Twilight Luggage

Lupus Golem is another act intimately associated with the wonderfully-named Twilight Luggage label, your Norwegian one-stop-shop for everything weird, improvised, droning and devious. Usually my eyes skip over the descriptions that bands conjure for themselves, but Lupus Golem are special when it comes to pinning themselves down, describing their art as “a mentally disabled, bastard son of Khanate and Skullflower, raised in a dark and cold dungeon by Keiji Haino's grandmother and Derek Bailey's ghost, trying to scrape his way out of a sarcophagus”. Now that is excellent. Shit like that will put me out of a job.

“Minotaure” consists of two moderately-lengthed spasms of fuzzy, morose, swampily-slow, distorted shapes, built out of cymbals and drones and bass and bangs and squeals and background interference. The monolithic progression of noise seems to weep dull-eyed despair, particularly on “Minotaure Part I”. Ambient noise fields open both tracks, but the mudded onslaught of the drums and guitars aren’t to be denied, and, drenched in effect, it is these that direct the shambolic musical rout, howling and toothy on “Minotaure II” for a long, unhappy stretch of time, before the inevitable self-destruction occurs and everything is deconstructed into buzzing drone, broken squeals and twitching cymbals which haven’t realised that they’re dead yet.

Placing emphasis on Lupus Golem’s miasmic side kind of makes them sound primitive, which they’re decidedly not – drudgingly filthy as much of their approach is, you still get the impression that every element has been carefully placed, which in a way makes them an even scarier prospect. Their bio states that they are interested in how sound effects the nervous system, and it’s hard not to feel like part of a sinister, profoundly physical experiment as the low end of “Minotaure” trawls through your gut.

That Lupus Golem can be so determined and focused in producing such a sluggish, unwholesome sound, and can create such a horribly immersive experience, is testament to their dark imagination and considerable skill. This is a twisted, difficult, rewarding listen which will appeal to twisted, difficult bastards everywhere.