Finally a label wakes up and recognises the talent of Zilla, aka King Cannibal, and are prepared to let him reign his brutalism without censorship. The first two EP’s for Ninja Tune showed a promise that the album would be a diverse venture to the outer reaches of post-apocalyptic hardcore.
King Cannibal steps outside the fashionable and brings an album of diversity that touches many genres with his own twist but weaves a thread that’s brutal, claustrophobic, brooding, yet mesmerising. There’s so much influence here from industrial sounds, a brutalism going back to the 80’s experimenters mixed with a healthy dose of future dancehall, house, dub techno, dubstep, drum ‘n bass and a post-rave mentalism.
‘Aragami Style’ drops in and out, beats abruptly stop to enable spooky spoken word samples to raise the tension and suspense. ‘Murder Us’ featuring Jahcoozi with a murderous, sultry vocal, again adding tension to a slow burning dub techno track. ‘Virgo’ featuring Face-A-Face brings the dancehall to full tilt. More dub techno energies for ‘So… Embrace The Minimum’, but with hardcore bass and synth stabs, returning to a Basis Channel style minimalistic burner. ‘Dirt’s featuring Daddy Freddy gets really dirty in the dancehall, reminiscent of earlier King Cannibal 12″s, drawing parallels with The Bug.
‘Colder Still’ returns to Zilla’s drum ‘n bass roots, injecting an evil spoken story similar to the rantings of Skinny Puppy’s Nivek Orge, with massive percussive and industrial stabs and rolling beats morphing into apocalyptic break beats – this would sound massive on a big sound system. The tension continues, even with the ambient track on the album, ‘Onwards Vultures’, sounding more like a doom metal ambient interlude than a sweet Eno experiment. The final track ‘Flower Of Flesh And Blood’, starts with a Middle Eastern percussive theme, again introducing a creepy spoken interlude, before dropping some massive beats with truly menacing synth stabs, and a welcome return to the TB303 acid bubbling with the rhythm, taking you back to the days when Hardfloor were king – a masterpiece of restraint.
King Cannibal has delivered an album of influences processed through his brain and squeezed through his machines, and it’s a pretty scary vision, but its good to be scared.
Wayne Stronell
