Review
Iron Lung
White Glove Test

Sweet jesus did Iron Lung ever “come back” with a bang (seriously it has been six years since the band’s awesome album, Sexless // No Sex and even though they released a bunch of splits and collaborations in the interim, it still seems like they have been a bit quiet of late) with the extremely ambitious White Glove Test; with this album, Iron Lung belt out the vicious power violence that they have garnered a well deserved reputation for creating but also add a second disc (on both the LP and the CD versions) that contain the industrial and noise based experimentations that the duo has been exploring for a while, which can be listened separately or together offering an even more intense listening experience.

Iron Lung certainly stake their claim as the premier practitioners of powerviolence in even the most pure sense of the word as the straight and unadulterated versions of the songs that make White Glove Test rattle off and punish my ear drums in the best possible ways as the album just whips by in an absolute blur of frantic drums, buzz saw guitars, and appropriately bellowed vocals (from opener “Pain Directive” through “Containment” these two guys just crush their instruments with “Heirs To The Prize” being one particularly delicious beating); and then there are the more measured attacks of songs like “Absurdity”, “Brutal Supremacy I, and “Plasma Separatist” that both make the other songs seem even faster and powerful showing that Iron Lung fully understands the power of dynamics in ways that other bands that ply this style of music do not always understand.

The industrial and noise experiments work in ways that I did not expect as Iron Lung churn out the moody “White Glove Test Finds More Filth” which not only a fully realized noise track but also a cool mix of random vocal shouting with borderline harsh noise wall sections and even some dark ambient soundtrack movements, and when this track is merged with the powerviolence songs, White Glove Test takes on a whole new aspect pushing the record into some interesting new sonic territories, particularly “Absurdity” where the noise fills in some of the empty space in with unnerving results and the ominous white noise background of “Plasma Separatist”.

White Glove Test is quite simply one of the more impressive records that I have had a chance to hear of late in large part due to the willingness on the part of Iron Lung to pursue their interests and combining their excellent grasp and take on powerviolence with a sophisticated command of noise and power electronics, and ultimately leading the album to possibly being a great example of a band being at the pinnacle of their powers (at least to date); I honestly cannot give you a better example of the violent music that Iron Lung displays with White Glove Test, and it would behoove you to dive head first into this album, which just might be considered a seminal record or high water mark for the “genre” as time passes, and bask in the band’s version of hardcore punk.