PORN "PORN AMERICAN STYLE" (Man's Ruin)

Porn's debut album from almost 10 fucking years ago, released by the mighty Man's Ruin label. That should be enough to tell you what this album sounds like and what aesthetic Tim Moss has always injected into his music, but in case it isn't, here you go. This is the most nihilistic side of doom and sludge metal, the pure fucked-up feelings of pointless worthlessness that seep into your being when heavy drug use becomes involved. Not that chemical abuse can't yield transcendental results and experiences; just that there's always a brutal, dirty underside and that's what Porn have always sought to illustrate with their festering, rotted guitar damage. This shit is rough. It's exactly what you expect throwing up into a toilet bowl filled with blood would sound like. It's all hate and abuse and misanthropy filtered through a shattered prism of nasty backwoods sexuality and degradation of both genders. The things you like will cause you pain. There is no growth or exploration in Tim Moss's view of sex; there is only the spilling of fluids, the sweat, the animal satisfaction and the idea of base urge. There is no caring or tenderness, no coupling. Fucked because you want to do some fucking. Pick another person and fuck them. You don't need to know anything else.

The funniest part of this is that this is their lightest album. All the elements described above are present here in abundance but as they went further Porn only served to get more hardcore and harsh, culminating in last year's beyond-levelling collaboration with Merzbow. This is a band focused on total sonic domination. You will be pushed down into the dirt by the power on display here. Guitars are eruptions of distortion and hell sludge, drums pound away hatefully until every hit becomes a dead, echoless punch in the face. Bass is throbbing with fuzz and bloated with distortion to the point of explosion, like a fat sated leech that doesn't know its own limits. If you could filter the philosophy of de Sade into some sort of musical pronouncement, this would come very very close (although Porn doesn't take themselves quite so seriously.) It's a massive mind-fucking brain massaging war on your sensibilities and nothing less than total acquiescence will be accepted. There is no integration nor assimilation, only pure uncompromising control. For a debut album this displays a remarkable thematic intensity and it's to their credit that Porn only went on to more chaotic and disparaging sonic skirmishes. Totally recommended, if you can find it.