Pigs In the Ground, "Tropical Delirium" C-30, (Aural Secretions, 2007)

Pigs In the Ground, Tropical Delirium C-30
Aural Secretions, 2007

At this present date, the obsessively dark, violent, and associated doom and gloom aspects of industrial and noise music have by now far exceeded and exhausted their use as thematic motifs and "inspirations," and have now dropped in the ironic abyss of self-parody. Of course, this might have (and probably has) been said before, probably many years ago, before I'd even had my first bewildering taste of noise, but I think at this point it's fair to say that while there is no subject unworthy of artistic inquiry, it's time to stop flogging that dead horse which some refer to reverently as KVLT. It has begun to stink.

Pigs In the Ground are not a "KVLT" noise act, but on their latest release, the now out-of-print Tropical Delirium cassette, this Oakland duo of Brutal Sound FX alumni Sharkiface and Loachfillet peer beyond the veil of everyday aural perception, and stare into the beating heart of a festering, atmospheric underbelly of ero guro nansensu and post-industrial noisescapes. There are two sides to Tropical Delirium, each clocking in at just under 15 minutes. Side A features three tracks, "Tropical Delirium," "Pulsations of the Feast," and "Darkness Swelters in the Ballroom," and Side B only has one track, 15-minutes of "Smoldering Ashes." Unfortunately, as neither side of the C-30 is marked as A or B, and no audible cue to delineate one track from another (that I could hear in my first three or four listens), I can't really say anything about the tracks individually. However, taken as a whole, Tropical Delirium's four tracks evoke an atmosphere of sensuously delayed and decayed noise decadence that is as unsettling as it is alluring.