Maggot Mass
Pharmakon
Sacred Bones Records
****
This is the fifth studio album from Pharmakon which is the working moniker for Margaret Chardiet and comes five years after her last release. She describes the pieces as portraying “a repulsion towards the toxic relationship humans have created with the environment, about self and each other's destruction”. It’s an experience which will haunt and disturb you throughout its duration which is exactly the response I feel she was going for.
For those of you new to Pharmakon, its an experience described as Industrial and Punk with its vitriolic and experimental roots in Power Electronics and Noise, and I can’t think of a better way to describe this. I’ve listened to it many times over the last couple of weeks and it still makes me totally uncomfortable thanks to the constant distortion and doom-laden tone. This is not a criticism as the more you listen the more you get the unique concept, you understand the album as a whole, which is to dissect the dysfunctional connection we humans have with the other lives and species on this earth and our total contempt for the environment which surrounds us all.
The album title is summed up perfectly by Chardiet, “A maggot eats death and alchemizes it back into life: breaking down matter and recycling its’ nutrients. One gift begets another. It soon undergoes its’ miraculous transfiguration into a fly and continues to pollinate 70% of plants: midwives and messengers to the flora of Earth. And we? We pollute instead of pollinate. A select few profit from scouring, pillaging and staining the dirt at the expense of the many, with net losses to the diversity of life on the planet, and by the degradation and death of those who are trampled just to serve their greed.” Take this broad concept and you understand the full work here.
The piece begins with Wither and Warp which sets the whole tone perfectly. Insects buzz around whilst a distorted percussion section pulses away and drags us to a deep, raw, haunting vocal. This procession of noise leads us to Methanal Doll which for me is the standout track. Again, starting with distorted drums it bangs away whilst Chardiet’s vocals spill over into the centre of the sound. Lyrics are deliberately lost in the mix to ensure you return to listen to the meaning which is where the true heart of the album is. The themes this covers are uneasy for us to admit to allowing to happen, so she makes us work to get to the core of the work.
Buyer’s Remorse is the shortest track here with Chardiet’s vocal sounding as if it’s been sandpapered and she’s then gargled salt laced vinegar. It’s this harshness and confrontational delivery, coupled with piercing feedback punctuating the lyrics which makes it challenging at times but stick with it. Splendid Isolation brings back the looped drum only this time heavier and more deadly in tone. The distorted, vibrating vocal disturbs the listener, as if being led to a funeral pyre after being found guilty of some gruesome, dark charge. The album concludes with Oiled Animals, the longest track on the album running just over 10 minutes. Slightly more subdued but just as enraged as the rest, this one allows the metallic percussion to come to life and march us to an end with a harmonic call of awareness and a need to change before its too late.
Maggot Mass will obviously not appeal to everyone, but to anyone who wants to listen to unique, experimental, dangerous and compelling art then this will be for you.
