Dedicated to Lucio Fulci
(Apocalypse) www.apocalypse-recordings.com
Listen, there's plenty that you can't trust me with- your life, your money, the care of your children and pets- but when it comes to all things loud, wild and heavy, I've got the instincts of a genetically engineered werewolf let loose in a girl's dormitory, so trust me on this one. DJ Tense and his apocalyptic cohorts are cyber outlaws in a murky electronic arena commonly known as Hardcore Techno, a dive-bombing, brain eating form of pure acid-fried pseudo -industrial madness that has zero to do with whatever you imagine techno is. It is, however, hardcore as a motherfucker. Consisting mainly of a stuttering drum machine fed through a distortion pedal and plugged straight into the hive mind of a shadowy cabal of serial killers and mutants, it is the sound of electricity itself revolting, horror and panic through the eyes of the big machine. If it shares anything with the mindless dance floor drone of traditional techno music, it's a sense of repetition- rarely does a track end up much differently than how it started. But it is in those rigid confines of fascistic beats that the liquid witchcraft begins. That jackhammer rhythm beating straight into your nervous system could go on for minutes, hours, or days, but you'd hardly notice,
since you're so far gone in some lysergic
rabbithole, threatened by vague black shapes and be-fanged wonders, that time no longer has much essence. This is the headphone music of the crazies, screams from the digital gutter, technology's ugly revenge on the flesh. Of course, as in metal or punk or whatever, most of the people calling themselves 'Hardcore' in this genre are anything but, and 90% of it is just industrial dance without the sex appeal. But not the sonic assassins at NYC based Apocalypse Recordings, baby. These fuckers mean it, man. DJ Tense may or may not be the cat responsible for that mysterious Satanic panic mix-tape that found it's way to many unwary souls' mailboxes- including mine- back in the early 90's. Filled with demonic gibberish and white noise and samples from the McMartin preschool trial, it was a hideous, nerve rattling thing that fucked up everyone that came in contact with it. Anyway, Tense ain't talking. But even if it wasn't his bloody work, it's sinister influence worms it's way into this split single. Tense and Nevermind are both equally dedicated to drudging up the zombie dread of Fulci's watershed gut spiller, and although this is hardly a faithful adaptation of "The Beyond" soundtrack, it captures the film's deep dark mood of berserk horror perfectly. Of the two tracks, Nevermind's is the more recognizably human, featuring some chugging metal guitar that might be sampled Slayer, minced into bite sized chunks and tossed into a torrid sea of rapid fire beatbox hammering. Tense, on the other hand, is more of a purist- his track adheres to his classic subway train flying off the tracks aesthetic. Collectively, this single pretty much renders anything that's been labeled 'punk' in the last 15 years pretty fucking useless, because this is the real blood and guts of the DIY rebellion. I smell the smoke of a whole new revolution in these jagged cuts, and it looks to be a bloody one.