Death-related albums

[Bloated Slutbag]

won't it be quicker to list the ones which aren't death-related?

Yeah drawing a blank here.

[Andrew McIntosh]

won't it be quicker to list the ones which aren't death-related?

Yeah drawing a blank here.

Really? Our friend did say

any genre will do, noise, metal or otherwise

, so if we're thinking about Noise, projects like Astro, CCCC, Hijokaidan, The Incapacitants, Merzbow, Chop Shop, The Haters, The New Blockaders, Organum, Smell & Quim, Z'ev, etc. all have done loads of releases without alluding to death.

It's more an Industrial/PE thing, I think, but even there, there are projects like Con Dom, Shift, The Grey Wolves, Genocide Organ and so on who have focussed on stuff like sex, politics, violence and all the usual other stuff that isn't, or isn't always, death related.

Some might argue that Harsh Noise can be quite life affirming, particularly in the right live setting.

[Bloated Slutbag]

won't it be quicker to list the ones which aren't death-related?

Yeah drawing a blank here.

Really? Our friend did say

any genre will do, noise, metal or otherwise

, so if we're thinking about Noise, projects like Astro, CCCC, Hijokaidan, The Incapacitants, Merzbow, Chop Shop, The Haters, The New Blockaders, Organum, Smell & Quim, Z'ev, etc. all have done loads of releases without alluding to death.

It's more an Industrial/PE thing, I think, but even there, there are projects like Con Dom, Shift, The Grey Wolves, Genocide Organ and so on who have focussed on stuff like sex, politics, violence and all the usual other stuff that isn't, or isn't always, death related.

Tongue was a bit planted in cheek there, you got me. In fact, I was going to weigh in earlier along the same lines. If we're talking a full and immersive exploration of the theme, not a lot immediately leaps to mind. Surprisingly. Okay, there are titles. There is artwork. There are the occasional lyrical fragments. But. There are examples given in this thread where as far as I can tell the only connection is one track has the word "death" in the title. I mean hey if that works for people fine but uh...

I'm no neuroscientist but some of this could relate back to brain chemistry and what an immersion into preferred sounds (and other indulgences) will do. Just ask Neil Postman.

[Andrew McIntosh]

If we're talking a full and immersive exploration of the theme, not a lot immediately leaps to mind. Surprisingly. Okay, there are titles. There is artwork. There are the occasional lyrical fragments. But. There are examples given in this thread where as far as I can tell the only connection is one track has the word "death" in the title. I mean hey if that works for people fine but uh...

There probably aren't that many Noise/etc projects that fully explore the whole phenomena, in any way. Which is a bit odd, yes. But I suppose the more conventional subject matter of violence, sex and so forth is always going to be more overtly attractive to people anyway. It's like people are into Death Metal, perhaps, in that it has all this cathartic energy that allows people to get it out of their system, which is fair enough. But a real look-into the subject, I was a bit hard pressed at first to think of many. They've got to be there, though, surely. 

What came to mind just then is some of the work of Rudolf Eb.er, with his "Ritual Practice of Conscious Dying" series, for example. Field recordings from Japan of a whole range of sources that have metaphoric and ritualist associations with Death and dying. He also did a split release with Maso Yamazaki's Controlled Death project.

https://rudolfeber.bandcamp.com/album/om-kult-ritual-practice-of-conscious-dying-vol-i

Also, Zero Karma's "The Secret Eye Of L.A.Y.L.A.H.", which apparently used human bones as sound source. Maybe it's the Ritual Industrial types that would have more overtly Death related projects.

[Leewar]

Metgumbnerbone's early works perhaps? (extra bonus points for being arrested for grave robbing)

[AdamLehrerImageMaker]

CON-DOM - How Welcome Is Death to I Who Have Nothing More to Do but Die

Amen!

It is excellent album in its harsh cold realistic perspective, where death has no "cool" qualities. Its the last howls of demented patients just hoping to die, human remains that are alive, but weak and without purpose. Disease and decay, that isn't about pile of corpses and dreams of what awaits "on the other side".

These experiences of real life sheer misery are good substance and one angle to death, but that said, I think in noise there is this element that you find certain realism from absurdity of imagination. I probably said it elsewhere too, but like with death, one can look another classic topic of rough sound: Sex.  Would one want noise based on healthy relationship. What's that garbage? Of course many may find it funny that some socially awkward virgin is doing totally dehumanizing sexobject filth, but that emotion tends to be real and with consequences. Plenty of variation in degrees of obsessions and emotions, but in context of noise, outrageous and unrealistic lust of virgin could be vastly more interesting than something based on healthy relationship.

In death-noise, you can see the same. All those people who tend to deal with death and disease in their life (like work), it is real and it may be personal in some ways, but also largely routine. Something that goes beyond the banal level what we all can sooner or later see, the content that is something else, seems very valid for me. In short, pile of corpses on tape cover, rarely disappointment. Even if done by people who approach it from seemingly funny angle, like virgins approach sex noise.

Though I doubt something like "romantic noise" would be good, I would be interested in something like "simp noise," or noise meant to evoke the blind erotic obsession with a woman. Or a man. Whatever the artist is into.

[Zeno Marx]

I haven't listened to this yet...

https://dave-phillips.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-journey

[Thermophile]

another one is  Trilogie De La Mort by Eliane Radigue

[Kaaoskultti]

Prurient - Troubled Sleep

One of my favorite Noise albums of all time, Troubled Sleep is a masterfully crafted maelstrom of white noise, crackling, waves of piercing feedback, and omnious low frequency brooding, all structured properly in a rather short album. That deals, as I came to discover, primarly with death. Its lyrics contain recitations from the book of American poet and journalist Jean Feraca, which is, according to an extensive rateyourmusic review of Prurient's discography, a relative of Dominick.

The book itself is based on the death of her brother, and Dominick's uncle. The lyrics are subtle, sensitive I would say, and delivered in a poetic fashion that seems mystical yet overwhelmingly brooding. Take for example the lyrics for Bolt:

I draw the bolt, you jimmy the lock
I yank the shades, you tap at the glass
I'm shut against you like a fort
But you seep through, your foot-
Prints multiplying overnight
Spreading over the carpet like a dew
Devouring mist
You're in the air I breathe
You're growing in my left breast
I hack you out, but you grow back
Hang on, jaws locked
You flop at my back, at my chest
Overhead, your yellow eye
Roving like a hawk
You swoop across my yard, your shadow
Blowing toward me in my sleep
You're piling high against the door
You're howling like a jackal on the other side
A whiff of me bristles your hock
You sniff the air and bay
Begin your long relentless trek
Loping out of the desert half-lame

Seems to be describing the effect of his death on the author. The lyrics for The Zealot give no doubt about the profound nature of this work:

He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything die
He never let anything.

Definitely a great album, leaning towards a more Harsh Noise Prurient.

PS: Funny thing though:"The album's mastering, a trademark of Fernow's production style and overall noise ethic, is noticeably extremely clipped, and its DC offset is at times in the album intentionally brickwalled. Due to this, in an anomalous case of Prurient's albums being digitally distributed, the album is nearly incapable of being properly listened to on Spotify, as it amounts to faint white noise." (Wikipedia) - because of this, the first time I heard this album on an automatically generated YT playlist, it was just a sharp wall of white noise, almost with no dynamics at all. Didn't notice at all, at first that I hadn't actually listened to the actual songs from the album, and why would I? Heh. Sounded to me like Prurient went HNW-ish or something.

[Bloated Slutbag]

As Hiroshige's lyrics were recently spotlighted in the Noise about … ”life” ? topic, here's a Deep-L translation of a personal fave, "Hell!", the closing ditty on his third (and imo last genuinely great) solo joint, I wish they would all just die (1999), surely to qualify in the canon of death-related noise albums. (A youtube sample is linked in my comments on "structure" in the WCN thread.) Always brings a morbid smile to the face.

Hell!
Even if you live, it's still a prison
Even if you die, you're still in prison
There is no end.
Only eternal suffering.
No one can be trusted.
No one to help you
No one can help you.
I wish they would all die.
Just getting up in the morning is a prison.
Just getting up in the morning is a prison
There is no salvation.
There's no use praying.
I don't want to see anyone.
I don't want to breathe the same air as you.
I don't want to be a burden to anyone
I wish you'd all die!
A single human being is enough.
I'll live on my own.
You'll all die.
Now die.
Die now.
Die in front of me.
Death in five seconds.

[Lysergikon137]

In short, pile of corpses on tape cover, rarely disappointment.

A quote to live by.

The sweet thing about death-oriented noise, no matter the real motivation, is that the extremity and abstraction of it all is an indication of a fascination with the beyond, and art as a tool draws us into that sympathetic state with the artist. I'm not necessarily a necrophiliac fetishist, but Atrax Morgue was the guy who REALLY got me into all this because the intensity of the obsession climaxes with a sort of minimalism that synthesizes with the extremity of the subject matter into a potent expression of gnosis. To be honest, I really don't dig noise that DOESN'T have a death focus, because to me noise IS the sound of the death mysteries (PANdemonium being a great word to sum it all up with). It doesn't matter if it's brutal slasher shit, cerebral necro-fetish shit, it is ultimately all communicating the same thing whether the artist is totally cognizant of it or not. A lot of people tap into something deeper without realizing it, and their art can be a lantern down the cavernous path we all take to discover things. If you're not a stagnant couch potato human you should be dying and rebirthing yourself every day. What better way to embrace that than steeping yourself in the artistic expressions of death and decay?

My personal taste in that lies in the more ambient side of the Slaughter and Cold Meat Industry rosters, with (aside from Atrax Morgue and Brighter Death Now) Urna, Archon Satani, Djinn, and Megaptera.

One of my favorite recent releases that captures a nice sadistic embrace of inflicting death is this one: https://abhorrentafterdeath.bandcamp.com/album/circuit-corrupter-destructive-maelstrom

[tiny_tove]

Morgue Ensemble, including the photobook based on first-person shooting inside morgues and death scenes in Italy-
tragic