ninehertz

A doom jam band - or "spontaneously induced blackened noise" as they more poetically describe it - from Hong Kong, with a killer Hello Kitty cover... yep, I'm in. Three tracks that'll strain your ears, play with your sanity but provide a strange adrenaline buzz you'll want to deny but can't.

The first track, the introduction to Black Neutron sets it out - maniacal guitars with a chaotic and wild psychedelia edge to them, attached to increasingly harsh vocals burning across the horizon, it shifts from sounding like a rabid mess to organic doom innovation regularly. And the thing is, neither state is a bad thing - whilst a hippy jam band losing the connection and where instruments clashing over the top would be the worst excesses of jam bands, this is doom noise! You call that rampant indiscipline? Well.. yes it is, but it is intentional. The aim here is for ugly and jarring. Get with it. To be fair, by its end it just sounds like they're going mad.

The middle track is even less in the way of even the scent of structure here, makes me realise the first track was practically conventional, especially as the glitchy noise elements come in, sounding like one of those out there experimental mathy grind bands (Dead In Latvia, I'm looking at you). The final song launches out violently - I love it immediately. It sounds like an especially raw - emotionally and in production - live recording of an unsettling noise-rock infused doom band. It's easily the most structured song here, and still descends into an audio-overload blow out.

God only knows why I stay with this, and ultimately end with a smile plastered to my face - there are reasons aplenty not to after all, to quickly move away, and for the sheer fact everything points to the band wanting you to hate them through the warped cruelty they inflict on your ears. But here we are, and I'm already keen to see what comes next from them.