I always find myself ruthlessly dipping my feet into music’s furthest edges, all with some intent to quell my curious senses through the most challenging of raw auditory trauma. For those desiring to truly pervert their current understanding of extreme music, a deep submission into each following selection may satiate some deep inner morbid curiosity…or perhaps you’ll be left with more questions than answers.
#8. Life With The Lions (Lennon/Ono)
What better way to begin the “Most Disturbing Albums in Underground Music” than with one of the most revered artists in rock and roll? “Life With The Lions” found origin through audible scrapbooking as John Lennon and Yoko Ono vehemently showcase multiple Cagian philosophy tropes in an attempt to catalog their ever growing chaos prior to the Beatles’ breakup. Despite endless media attention, it remained ignored by the general public. Opener “Cambridge 1969” leaves absolutely zero breathing room for even rare fans of such anti classics as Revolution 9 and Wild Honey Pie. It’s even shocking to myself to suggest that this agonizing cacophony half performed by a Beatle resembles early power electronics but alas, it really is THAT out-there. Moods only sour further with the one-two punch of “Baby’s Heartbeat” and “Two Minutes Silence”. Both link to the miscarriage of Yoko Ono illustrating life and death through a bleak capture of their unborn child’s pulse followed by…two minutes of silence.
No moment through the obscure “Life With The Lions” is a comfortable one, rather closer to a voyeuristic view into the couple’s life. John and Yoko’s philosophical goal of creating an uncomfortable and explorable sound experience succeeds, sure to disrupt the minds of classic rockers then and now.
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#7. Plus (Christina Kubisch)
Christina Kubisch’s uncanny sound art touches the furthest edges of avant garde to a point beyond description. Fantastical noise dreamscapes only somewhat detail her extensive musical craft. Examples of her mastery at play include 1987’s “The Cat Dream’, an auditory depiction of the world through a curious kitten’s mind. This had been my initial discovery of her work several years back in which I was then immediately thirsting for more. Across a half century of releases, I’ve found her outtake assemblage “Plus” to take me furthest away from comfort amongst them all.
2023’s “Plus” delivers Kubisch’s usual bizarre overdubs layered with a more constructed feel, a collection of five surreal visions that still leave me in confused awe. “Chaleur” and “Sweet Sour Hot Spicy” resemble sharp textures to be felt, not listened to. Yet I’m hesitant to give it any simple reductive label bordering on “field recordings” or “ambient”. Every possible sense seems to be in motion through a listen of any track. Furthest ascension climaxes with the 20-minute indescribable sound art piece “Vasenresonance”. There’s genuinely no words I can give to detail the disorienting musicality present, a testament to Kubisch’s avant-garde brilliance. My mind wanders by the end of it all, asking, “how is it possible for music to truly fuck with me that hard?” Yet I still remain eager for more.
Highly recommend!
#6. Crash Injury Trauma (Isolrubin BK)
Aesthetics present in underground genres are often meant to shock through some combination of medical deformities or perverse sexual debauchery. But Brian Williams of pioneering avant garde juggernauts Lustmord swerve the concept of true life and death towards a subject familiar to all on “Crash Injury Trauma”.
Intertwined with brooding percussion are sampled accidents, abrupt car horns, and shattered glass to paint a continuously anxious listening experience. How comfortable could one be delving into “Extensive Fissured Skull Fractures Produced By The Head Striking The Border Of The Windshield”? Outer CD packaging retain the thematics, materialized with traffic iconography overtop a crash victim.
Collectively, this album stands as a reminder and bizarre tribute to the lives taken from high-speed reckless endangerment.
#5. Necrophilia + Examples of Cannibalism (Come)
Those familiar with controversial power electronics masterminds Whitehouse may already aware of William Bennett’s original label, Come Organization, which had issued a limited series of taboo tape recordings ranging in obscurity. Past the multitude of serial killer interview releases lie two in particular that peaked my curiosity by name alone.
“Necrophilia” is a presumed radio broadcast of the very passionate Lila, a self described “Queen of Necrophilles”, vehemently defending her attractions to reporters and religious die-hards over the course of an hour. While lacking any musical qualities whatsoever, this forgotten tape remains as a nearly half century old voyeuristic look into underground extremities far before the days of LiveLeak.
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“Examples of Cannibalism” remained equally, if not more elusive in my search. Initial 1982 tape copies were enclosed with a 12-page booklet that since has been lost to time. What we are left with are some wicked industrial pieces overtop an overly soft spoken William Bennett narration detailing vague cannibalistic crimes. For fans of Whitehouse’s “150 Murderous Passions”, you may find solace in the usual audible torture present here. (if you can track it down!) I’m honestly stunned in saying this forgotten relic is somehow even more wild.
#4. Gore and Perversion (Desecration)
Wales extreme metal collective Desecration challenged public perception of violent aestheticism like no other before or since. 1996’s “Gore and Perversion” became enshrined in infamy through an authoritarian seizing of the band’s recording and musical equipment. It had all lay on the fact that original copies portrayed a crudely drawn assault on a wife and infant.
Lyrics for each track seem to follow this same unadulterated intensity, putting so-called shock tactics by Autopsy or Cannibal Corpse to complete mockery. Particularly sick is the closer “I.A.I”, retelling the events illustrated on Gore and Perversion’s front sleeve in explicit nauseating detail. A re-recorded 2003 version of this filth adds an outro so haunting and vague that it must be heard to be believed.
#3. The Great Guignol (Schloss Tegal)
Schloss Tegal viscously entered my mind around the age of 20. Sifting through countless obscure forums hunting for something utterly appealing had curiously led me to their infamous 1993 effort “The Grand Guignol”. Awaiting was a decaying human portrait seemingly without origin..in which occasional sources suggest a victim of Jack The Ripper. Nonetheless, it accurately foreshadows any listener’s state after a full dispersement within Schloss Tegal’s dark ambient abyss.
Torture photo collages grace the original CD’s inner packaging (seen below) ending with an excerpt from 1886’s ill faded paraphilia manual “Psychopathia Sexualis”. Crime veterans may even wince glimpsing over repeating images of Robert Berdella, whose crimes remain as some of the most sickening I’ve ever had the opportunity to hear. Multiple victims simultaneously experienced unfathomable needle torture, broken bones, and nerve failure via extreme compression. Album closer “Watch Me Flop Around” is a possible depiction of Berdella’s ruthless assaults from my own over-thought assumption. It’s worth noting a sample of rabid wolves lies present atop, the exact snippet used by both Psychic TV and Vagina Dentata Organ in the 1980’s. Other abhorrent so-called highlights within “The Grand Guignol” vary from:
•Screeching industrial sewage (“Meatgaze”)
•Brian Eno type textures bordering on utterly helpless desolation (“Anthropology”)
•A haunting cultish mantra repeating over decaying echoes (“From Light Into Darkness”)
•Twenty seconds of an infamous serial killer interview also sampled by beloved goregrinders Impetigo. (“Epilogue”)
•Childish echoing voices overtop deep pulses (“Black Dahlia”)
•Disgusting low pitched decrepit filth (“Hunting For Humans”)
Each track succeeds in fusing the harshest of industrial concepts with morbid psychological curiosity. Old school death metal commonplace throughout 1993 could only dream to reach such horrid equivalence. Schloss Tegal still continue within the experimental underground, yet never quite reaching such visceral levels of moraless psychopathy as initially present on The Grand Guignol. A YouTube comment I recall seeing off a full rip of this album states it best: “This is what Satan’s indigestion sounds like.”
#2. Entire discography (Smell and Quim)
Hantarash and GG Allin dominantly plague the common perception of extremity, often finding themselves atop countless “Most Extreme” type music discussions. Yet, seasoned masochists such as myself might consider British delinquents Smell and Quim as harsh noise’s shallowest.
Examples of the group’s live degeneracy vary from the sabotaging of 2008’s Dead Forever fest (via incinerating a chicken to ashes) to performative anal sex with bizarre objects including anchovies and oversized clubs. Expecting anything tantamount to “musical” past the theatrics is well…utterly futile. Scattered releases bear zero resemblance to any genre’s idea of consistency, escaping all description.
Album covers are about reactionary, in which one photograph adorning an infamous 1991 release had been believed to even portray illegal imagery. Confirmation with the likes of podcast Noisextra (who had spoken live with Smell and Quim at length on multiple occasions) settled this lingering uncertainty through an exchange of vintage interviews after inquiry.
Through a quick read, it seems as the band attempted to forward some Nirvana-esque philosophical statement to society with this endeavor. Yet I’d be surprised if anyone were able to extract such a conclusion from a group responsible for such intellectual works as “Steven Hawking’s Butt-Plug”. If the likes of power electronics weren’t artistically and socially alienating enough, Smell and Quim exist to push extreme music beyond its preconceived limit.
#1. Dirge (Martin Bladh)
Can any name carry the weight embodied by taboo extraordinare Peter Sotos? Countless ventures into society’s ugliest within literature as well as his hijinxs with the previously mentioned Whitehouse instill him as perhaps disturbing music’s most notorious figure. Not everyone may be aware that 1992’s hyper-controversial “Buyer’s Market” samples nothing but public broadcasts prevalent on news channels of the time. It would be sixteen years later that Sotos’ work received an arguably far darker reinvigoration by virtually unknown visual and sound artist Martin Bladh.
During the course of translating Sotos’ book “Parasite”, he had carefully stitched together several noisy collage tracks rife with injurious production and traumatic recollections. Moments within “Dirge:Mary” alone are enough to declare this as the most disturbing record I’ve subjected myself to, featuring dialogue of an unnamed woman recounting an inhumane assault leaving her without arms. The preceding abrupt sonic blast resembling grating industrial glass will ensure that the uncomfortably real “The Peter Sotos Files” remain embedded in the minds of initially curious listeners for those daring enough to discover it. Blahd’s more physical works including mixed media collages can be found on his self titled website.
