By The Throat Is A Suffocating Experience
Ben Frost creates a cold, beautiful opus.
Ben Frost
By The Throat
Released on Nov 10, 2009
By The Throat, the latest by Aussie black metal/electronic experimentalist Ben Frost,
captures the feeling of being cold, trapped, and alone as well as anything
I’ve heard this year. If you’re the kind of person who finds pleasure
in being locked in your own claustrophobic headspace whilst being run
down by wild animals and evil machines, the album may be a source of particular inspiration for you.
I jest, of course. Kind of.
Less than a minute into the opener “Killshot,” a vaguely unsettling
but relatively quiet electronic landscape is bulldozed by waves of ear-splitting
metallic sludge. Steady but quiet melodic themes weave persistently
in and out of focus through the track and into the following “O God
Protect Me,” intercut with bursts of noise and genuinely horrifying
sound effects (See: howling wolves, screaming, and possibly an iron
lung), in the process creating an effective tension between sonic extremes.
The dichotomy Frost creates in the listener’s head between serene
melody and abject fear continues on “Hibakusja,” which sees a spare
melody augmented by nicely muted brass and then promptly run down by
the unmistakable sounds of respiratory distress.
The multi-part “Peter Venkman,”
as you have probably guessed, is not nearly as funny as the title suggests.
A repeated choral vocal line is the piece’s focus in its first half,
entering and exiting seemingly at random in the midst of Frost’s by-now-familiar
conflicting interplay of sonic dissonance and fragile melody. A dirge-like
orchestral interlude towards the conclusion of “Venkman” and the
majority of the quiet “Leo Needs A New Pair of Shoes” that follows
it offer a few welcome moments of respite from the anxious, hostile
atmosphere created by the record. When a prolonged hiss of noise and
the familiar wolves of “Killshot” return, we know that Frost is
ready to take us back into less comfortable territory.
The record peaks at its conclusion with a disturbing triptych. The electric guitar and rapid-fire drumming of “Through The Glass Of The Roof” chip at Frost’s wall of noise until breaking through into the wasp-like drone of the inward-looking “Through The Roof Of Your Mouth.” A subtle electronic beat creeps out from behind pulsing bass and dissonant strings and is soon enveloped in guitar and a wash of screeching noise, never to return. The faint but persistent melodic themes and swatches of rhythm weaving in and out of By The Throat are as understated as ever on album closer “Through The Mouth Of Your Eye,” and despair wins out: after a brief flirtation with the surface of the track, two faint melodies are engulfed in a last flood of bass, frantic strings, and static. At this point, Frost concedes that there is no escape, and the album ends abruptly. I’ve listened to By The Throat about half a dozen times now. I am relatively certain that it is very good. I am also upset, and don’t really want to listen to it any more right now. It’s a beautiful, horrible thing.
High Point
Frost’s refusal to compromise his dark vision makes for a challenging, compelling listen.
Low Point
The nightmares.
Posted by Miguel Harvey on Nov 10, 2009 @ 6:00 am
