Glaukom Synod return with their first release since 2014's Covered In Semen and Slime. Rising from piles of technodestruction and staggering from blown out communication hubs with fifteen minutes of extremely harsh electronic industrial propaganda, on Vampires and Gorgeous Throats Glaukom Synod emphasize the perfect components of each track in a way that makes them truly enjoyable and truly uncomfortable simultaneously. Having found a way to incorporate identity into the songs, the listenability of what normally would be revealed to fringe music aficionados is instead possible for anyone with a meager interest in experimental music. Glaukom Synod could easily open the wormhole towards harsh noise and electronics for anyone with a mind open enough to revel in the vastness of the genre.
Perhaps the best representation of this is in "Jungle Glaukom Fever," which is based on a deformed theme of Tarzan's yell. It is revisited several times in prime locations to reinvigorate the beat. Also worthy of further investigation is "Absoloz Omogr V. 1.0.5.," due to the strange rhythmic exasperation coursing throughout. The longest track, it's also the most subdued throughout it's majority, even breaking away into an an entirely new structure that only barely hints at the previous rhythms in the track as tempo is slowly increased. There are depths worth exploring in each track before completely grasping all the nuanced layers and sounds. It took me five or six listens to hear some of the low-end rhythms in "Jungle Glaukom Fever," and in a song like "Throattomb" once can get lost in pinpointing which beat to listen to.
What's so impressive with Glaukom Synod is the myriad usages of sounds and samples. The layers of different beats and rhythms are put together with such natural feel, even with such unnatural tones being used. For me, the whole thing mimics the aesthetic of Virus (John Bruno, 1999) in that it combines the natural and artificial into a unique life form in which the end result would be impossible without either. That this was all created using only 16 bit software and technology just makes the whole thing feel more genuine and impacting - it's not overworked, even for how layered and cramped it is.
Final track "The Iron Tongue (Razors In Your Mouth)" is culled from the Covered in Semen and Slime demo, and I would have preferred another two or three tracks to put the overall release at twenty minutes, especially if we were given some tracks of a tad more variety in tempos and intensity; something slow and drawn out between "Jungle Glaukom Fever" and "Ejaculohydron Tricephalis" could have been a key placement for pacing. Once again, however, Glaukom Synod is impressive in what matters: originality, replayability, and impact. Two releases now from Glaukom Synod have really impressed me. I'll be digging into their back catalog which stamps back to 2005 but I have a feeling finding physical copies of some stuff will be an adventure.
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