AN AXIS OF PERDITION “The Ichneumon Method (and Less Welcome Techniques)” LP

The term “crazy” is a terribly cliché these days, a literary parody of the highest order. Because other words are so woefully incapable of describing exactly what you hear when this album unfurls. Imagining the mind of a deranged man desperately trying to locate and isolate harmony amidst a chaotic maelstrom of warped thought, Axis of Perdition relentlessly torments the psyche, touting a storm of relentless industrial malice that mutates into increasingly sick soundscapes, only for its sound to further recede into utter chaotic abandon and admonish any hope of sanity.

And as if in a moment of clarity, sometimes the horror makes sense, the harmonies evolve, initially shakily, and a brief moment of respite is offered. Yet as desperately as the mind clings to coherence, this album finds itself racing down the face of dementia and repeating the cycle of the mentally ill.

While Stalaggh’s “Project Nihil” may indeed feature the voices of the mentally ill, it doesn’t even come close to the level of suffering and fear depicted here.

A thoroughly disturbing and haunting release.