DUSTED MAGAZINE

Dusted Reviews

Lietterschpich - I Cum Blood in the Think Tank

today features
reviews charts
labels writers
info donate

Search by Artist



Sign up here to receive weekly updates from Dusted


email address

Recent Reviews

Dusted Reviews


Artist: Lietterschpich

Album: I Cum Blood in the Think Tank

Label: Heart & Crossbone

Review date: Oct. 24, 2007


The six members who comprise Lietterschpich have produced a sort of reverse mutation throwback, a welcome sort of caveman stomp backwards into days of less-digital noise. Using drums, vocals, tape loops, no-input mixers and crusty electronics, the crudely-named I Cum Blood In The Think Tank is a dankly organic album, filled with slow hum and a buzzing, hazy filter obscuring unfriendly screams and primitive thuds. This is no laptop-driven computer noise band, and there are no crisp digital edges here.

The songs all boast brief titles, each appended with one or more exclamation points. From "Mud and Fun!!" to "Mire Blot!!" and the sarcastically-titled "Cookies Downtown!!!" the titles are mere footnotes, and for all the clarity they offer, the songs might as well have been labeled with numbers. It's possible that the lyrics have something to do with the song titles, but since the vocals are all distorted, reverberated and effected beyond all hope of understanding, it's a moot point.

"Stockfish!!" and "Malevolent Re-Creation Celebration!!" share a stomping smash-and-crash rhythm, with synth squiggles, low-end buzz, and crazed shouts that bring to mind the late, great Missing Foundation. Though Lietterschpich have a less-confrontational, more Benzedrine-soaked aesthetic. "Ventilation!" approaches Wolf Eyes territory, with rock-style drums holding up the shouts and bursts of noise.

The 12-minute center of the album, "A Horse and a Walk in the Park!!!," opens with screams and reverberations, reminiscent of old-school noisers like Grey Wolves and Con-Dom, and even a distorted vocal feel akin to vintage Master/Slave Relationship. The achingly slow rhythm and desultory hiss blends with some unexpectedly melodic organ, finally dissolving into stumbling, crashing drums and buzzing noise tones. The organ appears again on the final track, "One Thing Led to the Hit!!," a dramatic organ-led liturgy overlaid by layers of scuzz and grime.

The foggy, drugged haze overlaying Lietterschpich's noise does suck some of the power from it, but in place there's a palpable feel of human hands guiding things. The mysterious blend of shadowy cracked electronics, throat-ripping yowls and pounding drums is at once forbidding and appealing, a paradox lying at the root of one of the best noise albums I've heard in some time.

By Mason Jones

Read More

View all articles by Mason Jones

Find out more about Heart & Crossbone

©2002-2011 Dusted Magazine. All Rights Reserved.