Aesthetic Meat Front "Plague of Humanity" CD + VHS
[Collapse Industries]
This is the limited "Infected Blood Edition" of the "Plague of Humanity" CD, which comes with a video and is limited to a mere 39 numbered copies. This is gonna be a long fuckin' review because there's a lot to talk about, so sit back... First of all: The package. Now, I'm a sucker for an interesting package, and this is by far the most over the top and insanely packaged piece of work I have received in the last three-and-a-half years. Never have I had to go to so much trouble to review a CD. Why? Let's get to it, shall we? Okay, so... I slide this opaque red plastic bag out of the envelope it was mailed to me in. I flip it over and see a biohazard symbol alongside the words "infectious waste", and there's a small yellow sticker of a family wearing gas masks in the center of the package. "Damn, that looks pretty cool," I thought to myself. So I get a razorblade and begin carefully slicing open the bag (which has been folded so there are several layers of plastic to get through). As I get through the first layer of plastic, I start to notice a foul stench - it literally smells like a dead, rotting animal. At this point I look at the bag again, think long and hard about the fact that it reads "infectious waste", and proceed to cut the rest of the bag open. At this point the aforementioned foul odor is overwhelming. I glance inside and see nothing of the rotting carcass persuasion, so I cannot for the life of me figure out what the fuck that smell is coming from. I pull out the video first and see that there is a little bit of what I assume to be blood smeared on the label. I pull out some flyers that also have a little bit of barely noticeable blood smeared on them. I'm not a fan of the blood. Then, I see one of those metallic silver anti-static bags, sealed shut, containing the CD. I pull it out, and sure enough, there's a good deal of dry blood in there: Hence that horrific stench. A note taped to the bag reads, "Open carefully, bad blood inside." At this point I flip out and become paranoid that I'm going to contract every disease on the planet, because I'm a raging hypochondriac. After a few hours and an email informing me that the blood was not infected, and in fact came from a cow, I was slightly less disturbed but still faced the task of somehow getting the CD out of the sealed bag of dried blood. That's where the bleach, hot water, and rubber gloves came into play... but I'll leave it at that. Thankfully the CD itself was not actually covered in blood, it was sealed inside of a separate blood-covered bag... and holy shit, the smell... the fucking smell... I can still sense it. Vile. Mission accomplished for the Aesthetic Meat Front.Now, for the music. This project is the creation of central visionary Louis Fleischauer (vocals, electronics, etc.) with some help from R|A|A|N in the soundscape department. You might expect it to be rather harsh and blatantly confrontational, but that's not the case at all. I would classify it as a mixture of dark ambient and death industrial, as it never gets too abrasive or unstructured, and the atmosphere is consistently bleak and menacing. There's a lot of space in the material, it's not packed with layering or excessive volume levels or anything like that. It's not what I would call calm because there are too many sinister undercurrents happening, but it's not a jarring listen (granted "Final Curse" does have its highly explosive moments). It flows well. Expect lots of repetition to an almost hypnotic degree, eerie ambient textures and crunching distortion (in a very low key manner), manipulated vocals and samples, etc. One of the most interesting moments on the disc is "Voices From Beyond" - a "happy accident" sort of track that came when the band's sampler locked up and started recording itself using the birth screams of babies and the sounds of drums, bone, and meat recorded at a live performance. "A Little Horror is Good for Everyone" is the longest track at more than 12 minutes, and also the most disturbing, utilizing some audible samples of children screaming and what I assume to be the deranged and perverse statements of some serial killer, though I can't place the voice (it might be Arthur Shawcross). All in all the sound quality is nice. It's dense and gives everything room to breathe, and it's also neither too pristine nor too raw or anything like that. It's got a little bit of a warm lo-fi edge, but it's also sequenced and arranged in a tactful manner. The layout is alright. I love the front cover because the logo is striking and the textures/colors look very nice, but the rest of the visuals can get a bit busy as far as having a lot of bulky text filling in more space than necessary over top of a lot of busy background imagery and inconsistent color schemes. The back cover has a quote from Austin Osman Spare, closing with the succinct, "There is no good understanding in your world - this bloody transition by procreation and butchery." Most of the text within the booklet deals with overpopulation, as does the imagery (masses of people, some with their heads covered and bound by sheets and rope). It's a bit more specific though in that it deals with the value of human intelligence over human life, starting with a population chart displaying the increases in the world's population over the last five decades, and moving on to some text proclaiming that, "It seems as human population increases, human intelligence decreases. Mankind does everything possible to support its own de-evolution...", and finally closing with the exclamation that "...we still praise the value of human life as the highest of all. It is on the time to reconsider this and to be more concerned about the value of intelligence!"The video is actually very well done in some respects. The total running time is about 25 minutes, and was taken from a show in London back in 2001. The performance footage is nicely shot from multiple angles with a few tasteful visual effects and rough but tolerable picture quality. In my opinion it's also very well edited. The beginning and end of the video include lots of text information over either the live footage or stills of the band logo. As for the performance, it's pretty wild, and includes a bloodletting ritual of sorts as Fleischauer has needles inserted and removed from his forehead, he's also suspended from hooks in his back, there's some tearing and throwing of raw meat, numerous personnel are seen bashing on meat and metal with what look like wooden sticks or metal pipes, some sort of "noise violin" created from a large bottle of blood is utilized, and many of the audience members participate as well. The one downfall is that none of the audio is from the show. Instead all you get is a dull and repetitive distorted sizzle for the duration of the video, despite the fact that at several points in the video there are clearly vocals and percussion and such that really seem powerless when the audio doesn't match up. Assuming the quality was somewhat listenable I would've rather heard the live audio for sure. So that aspect makes things a bit disappointing. As a whole, this is a cool release that is hindered by minimal problems such as a slightly excessive running time, a certain lack of diversity (not necessarily much of a problem), and perhaps the true concepts of the band aren't exactly presented through the music (again not necessarily a huge issue). This is definitely nice work, and I'm curious to hear more from the group... but I could definitely do without the fucking cow blood next time. No one needs that filthy shit. (7/10)
Running time - 70:55, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: The Face of Humanity (Family of Pigs), Voices From Beyond, A Little Horror is Good for Everyone]
Aesthetic Meat Front - http://www.a-m-f.org

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