Korperschwache - Evil Walks [CD]

Evil Walks is the first widely available cd release for Crucial Blast from Korperschwache after almost a decade of smaller, limited-run discs released through the label's Crucial Bliss sub-imprint. It's also the most focused work yet from this utterly demented Texas outfit that started out in the mid 90s as a pure noise project but gradually evolved into this weird, lumbering black-dirge that we hear now.
The eight songs that make up Evil Walks feature the signature Korperschwache moves: thumping minimal drum-machine pound courtesy of the relentlessly decisive Doktor Omega, droning dissonant riffs that veer from hypnotic noise to dismal quasi-black metal buzz, RKF's narcoleptic croaking and malevolent sneer bathed in reverb and amp skuzz, guitars humming and droning against cranked-up amps while creepy news sound bites, the distant sad howling of wolves and ear-piercing screams drift across the background, songs like the sprawling eleven minute "The City Of Lost Girls" and "Me And You And A Can Of Gasoline" crawling all soft and solemn through clouds of deep bass buzz and those weird sing-song ghoul-snarls and trance-states of repetitive slow-motion industrial beats, while "Heaven's Gate" hurtles through a primitive scum-thrash assault of clanking drums, noise, simple punky riffing and distant howls that explodes into a washed out smear of overdriven blast beats and dreamy major key guitar. Strange post-punk reverberations rumble all throughout this disc, nothing new to those who are familiar with the myriad other Korperschwache discs that have come out since 2001 when RKF first began flirting with his odd mix of simple, mesmeric gloom-guitar and black mechanical slime, but it's never sounded better to my ears than it does here, when the music forms into this stoned blackened hypno-rock thing, the buzzing guitars and acid-scorched melodies looping over the skittery industrial beats and weird dubbed-out snares and concussive Godflesh-esque rhythms, turning into something that sounds remarkably like a mutant cross between late-80s British psych/drone rockers Loop and those notorious improv-black metal freakazoids Abruptum. A comparison that I've used before when trying to describe the thumping psychedelic graveyard din of Korperschwache, certainly, but it's never been more relevant than it is here. A warped, blasted beauty shining through rotting shadows and rapidly declining emotional states. A series of ecstatic demon zone-outs. A hallucinatory strain of necro drone-rock. It's not black metal, but Korperschwache's Evil Walks is definitely recommended to fans of the demented fringes of underground blackness inhabited by like-minded bands like Utarm, Wrnlrd, Charnel House, Diapsiquir, Brobdingnagian, Mamaleek, Wormsblood and Lonesummer. Comes in a full color digipack with illustrations by Nicole Boitos.