��Jason over at Malignant has cultivated an exceptional ear for the finest in heavy power electronics and death industrial, and 2013 saw a number of new albums from some of the best names in the field, one of the latest being the new full-lengther from Andrew Grant's solo project The Vomit Arsonist. Also a member of the severely spiteful power electronics duo Bereft, Grant has increasingly turned this project into an outlet for more atmospheric, though no less unsettling noisescapes that skillfully combine bleak blackened droning electronics and moody synth melodies with blasts of intense distorted heaviness. The latest entry in the Arsonist's arsenal of soul-crushing sonic nihilism is An Occasion For Death, the project's first release for Malignant, which finds the death industrial outfit now sitting alongside the esteemed likes of Steel Hook Prostheses, Nyodene D, Xiphoid Dementia, Control and Sektor 304. The seven tracks that make up this album are in the same dread-filled vein as the Arsonist's previous releases, combining crushing low-end drones and swirling black synthesizers with echoing, time-stretched voice samples, but this time the production feels a lot heavier, as if there are new depths to these dark rumbling drones, more monstrous exhalations of industrial dread.
�� The nauseating waves of black drone that surge over the opener "Think God Out Of Existence" are slowly joined by sheets of fearsome orchestral drift and intense choral textures; when the next track "At The Edge Of Life, Everything Is An Occasion For Death " kicks in, the effect is crushing, as ponderous, ominous oil-tanker percussion rumbles and reverberates beneath whirring celestial synths and Grant's ferocious distorted screaming. This has gotta been one of the heaviest things that I've ever heard from this project, with an almost Swans-like slow-motion pummel taking form, the sound stretched out even further into thunderous waves of soul-crushing industrial power. From there, the album continues to bloom into vast rumbling dirge, a sound that at times almost suggests that Grant is drawing just as much energy from the apocalyptic industrial metal of early Godflesh and the most glacial, blood-freezing extremes of doom metal as his is from the darkest realms of power electronics. The result is, of course, something that sounds pretty unique, certainly different from most of the other PE/death industrial outfits I've been listening to lately. That grinding, super-heavy deathdirge returns on "Black Bile", where eruptions of filthy bass are crushed beneath the slow, saurian blast of the drums. Other tracks like "At The Edge Of Life, Everything Is An Occasion For Death" and "The Absurd " are more minimal, still surrounded by a constant seething subterranean rumble, but with the rhythmic elements stripped out in favor of a basic black pulse that rises and falls, a pitch-black beacon blasting it's plutonium glow through the otherwise impermeable night of the Arsonist's apocalyptic vision. The whole album shifts slightly between these crushing pneumatic dirges and the more droneological depths of the Arsonist's sound, but even during the album's less aggressive moments, this is still extremely heavy shit. The last track "Means To An End" features guest synthesizer from Murderous Vision's Stephen Petrus, and washes over the album's last ten minutes with a mixture of malignant field recordings, distant grinding distortion and earth-shaking bass frequencies that resemble the roar of blood within one's own skull while bound and blindfolded in the soundproofed basement of some suburban sadist.
�� Oh yeah. One of C-Blast's favorite death industrial releases of 2013. Comes in a six-panel digipack.