Although I've been aware of the presence of Steel Hook Prostheses in the industrial/power electronics underground for years and have heard their collaborative work with Navicon Torture Technologies, I've never really checked out any of the group's full-length recordings until now. This Houston duo has released a bunch of short-run cdrs since the beginning of the decade, but The Atrocitizer is only their second widely distributed cd, which partially explains why it's taken me so long to finally hear these guys on their own. Some brutal stuff, here...packaged in a thick, glossy six-panel digipack from Malignant with disturbing images of wartime atrocities, prosthetic limbs, and human suffering, the guys in Steel Hook Prostheses don't have much of anything positive to say about man's propensity to subject his fellow man to horrific ends, and they evokes these grim and misanthropic vibes through a brutal hybrid of classic Cold Meat Industries style death industrial and a more blackened, hellish brand of industrial heaviness. Crushing distorted synths are woven into infernal riffs, and the monstrous vocals become a black toxic cloud of demonic hatred as they are filtered through caustic levels of distortion. Massive buzzing drones and sinister cavernous ambience swirl together, and subversive melodic figures float across the charred and scabrous surface of SHP's black industrial soundscape. Tracks like "Murderous Science" and "Tepid Discharge" are more "ambient", with ringing metallic pulses and throbbing mechanical whir drifting across a pitch-black abyss of Lustmordian drone while watery, insectile vocals ooze from cracked mandibles and wheezing demonic screams are vomited up in torrents of distortion and delay, while "In Dreams We Are Malevolent" and the awesomely heavy "Scarifier" infuse slow plodding death industrial rhythms and filth-encrusted drones a la Brighter Death Now with the swarming distortion-buzz and scathing, spite-filled raspy vocals of black metal. It's this definite black metal influence on Atrocitizer that makes this one of the coolest death industrial releases I've heard this year, and it hits a peak of supreme evil majesty on the final track "The Excruciation Sequence", where a single four-note minor key synth melody is repeated over a claustrophobic swarm of black buzz, distant percussion, wailing fx-soaked feedback freakout, crushing distorted synths, like a Cold Meat band covering a song from an early Norwegian black metal band. These guys manage to sound even heavier and more blackened than Navicon Torture Technoligies, which is saying somethin'. If you're into the really evil-sounding ends of the whole CMI/death industrial sound (Mz.412, Archon Satani, Megaptera, Brighter Death Now, etc) this is essential listening, but fans of the newer wave of black industrial, newer Prurient, Nordvargr's various guises, and the deranged industrial demonic sewerdrones of Deadwood would also all do well to wrap their ears around the pitch black heaviness of Atrocitizer. Recommended.