Dekonstruktor - Eating The Universe

Natural live sludge coupled with brief moments of electronic artificiality combine on Dekonstruktor's Eating The Universe to create a surprisingly coherent whole. Somewhere between Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics and Eyehategod's definitive early albums, the album's sparse mechanical elements blend nicely with the low-end resonance of extremely chunky bass rhythms. The conceptually industrial elements present in what could be aesthetically perceived as a Soviet style layout are a strong and clear-headed choice. Bold red coloring, utilitarian font choice, and that the band is Russian, provide sound support for this claim of iron curtain nostalgia - the band gives no indication of any ideological orientation; this is a comment solely on aesthetics. Lyrically, Dekonstruktor's focus seems more on the cosmological front than EHG's deep personal malaise. Though the album can be construed as dull, the use of effects and subtle improvisations give enough variety to lift the album past boring but only barely.

Dekonstruktor's six songs are not obese technically, with hardly a single moment demanding a single iota of musical proficiency, and yet some songs provide a significant amount of fat structurally to bite into. While "Eating the Universe" and "14" both are simple, with repeating central structures, "To The Red Pt. 2" is an example of a much more complex track, with a number of sludgy corruptions before repeating it's verse and recalling one of the three earlier introductory riffs. This then transforms into the second half of the song, which ambles ever onward for another five to six minutes. Dekonstruktor also reduce the feeling of repetition and idleness through the length of their phrases, often exceeding numerous bars before repeating, and often with minor variations, so sections which should feel repetitive don't always come across that way. For example, "Mindcutter" only has four unique riffs. The second of these motifs repeats more than thirty times, but the manner in which is is broken up, spread out, soaked in thick oozing fuzz, and recycled under a solo make its repeat appearances less noticeable; it does something new each time, and it's length - stretched into an almost eight measure length - reduces further the feel of repetitiveness.



Still, even with all these bases covered structurally, I'm not fully overwhelmed with the release. It is hardly true that that this form of sludge is unique; bands have felt compelled to be the drips of Eyehategod and Electric Wizard's spill for quite a while now and Dekonstruktor are no different. Energy is an issue, and so any sense of personal meaning obviously falls short. Mike Williams' deep inner resentment and frustrations which are so prevalent in Eyehategod's work does not have an equal here. Garish's vocals are often reverb-laden yelps off in the distance but without the definition and attitude of Jus Osborne. Boiling this all down: How do you make intense yet near-ambivalent slow music ooze with energy? I think it mostly relies on the vocal performance or manner in which the members show 'attack' on their instruments. If either of these singular elements is executed, there is some chance of imbuing the feel of purpose. I don't perceive sonic purpose here. There's an underlying tone of whateverism which fundamentally saps the life out the release.

Without flapping on forever about this six song tape, I'm nonetheless curious to know if these issues were resolved on a future release. If Dekonstruktor managed to balance the slow patient doom with any form of intrinsic energy on a subsequent release, the outcome would be quite positive. Acknowledging that this balance is difficult to find in the genre and that I'm not normally expecting anything intrinsically timeless any time soon within the stoner doom / sludge genre, Dekonstruktor  could be said to show a foundation to build on. "Mindcutter" is my favorite track, it captures most closely what the band does really well and maintains interest front to back. I'd like to hear a little more of the mechanical elements which I felt give the band some form of originality as well. Eating The World is a good stop for sludge and doom fans of numerous backgrounds. Fans of Electric Wizard and Sleep would especially find the band to their liking, but they likely won't find the energy - wherever that is found - they get from the best in genre.