The Skull Defekts: Open the Gates of Mimer
AA Records

Open the Gates of Mimer includes a single, 55-minute track documenting The Skull Defekts' live set at Sweden's 2005 Norberg Festival. Featuring core members Henrik Rylander (ex-Union Carbide Productions) on electronics and drums and Joachim Nordwall (ex-Kid Commando) on guitar and effects plus Thomas Ekelund (electric guitar) and Lasse Marhaug (Powerbook G4), the group generates a monolithic noisefest of incinerating feedback and raw guitar fuzz. Violent ripples and tears collide with deathly guitar stabs, conjuring apocalyptic images of charred bodies strewn across immolated landscapes. Opening rather tamely with guitar stabs puncturing the silence, the piece grows progressively noisier, especially during the last third when even hounds from Hades appear. Hellish and harrowing it may be, but it's also one of those sets you wish you could have witnessed just to see the combustible monstrosity coming to life before your eyes. Issued in a limited run of 500 copies, the disc comes packaged in a distinctive hand-printed and numbered cardboard case covered with Constructivist graphics.

February 2006