Torture is on everybody's lips these days. Our Vice President vaguely approves of hydrogen-based interrogation, and our anchormen volunteer to be waterboarded on the air as our cultural debate over instrumental dehumanization limps along. In our new and improved wars without borders against enemies without armies, we're running ourselves ragged trying to figure out how much pain it is okay to inflict on our prisoners.
My interest at present is more in how much pain it's okay to inflict on listeners: if Streicher's awesome War Without End represented the front lines of the war on terror, Wolf Eyes' latest, Human Animal, takes a stab at portraying Guantanamo Bay. It's a disjointed patchwork of buzzing signals and pulsating drones, sounding like a firefight between obsolete cyborgs in an abandoned field hospital. It's apt music for a mock execution, or for blasting at intransigent hostage takers. But all this is immaterial in a sense: Human Animal might do a nice job of mimetically calling up the zeitgeist, but does that make it worth investing a chunk of your paycheck/allowance/stolen booty in?
Tough call. Detroit-based Wolf Eyes have captured the imagination of a particular demographic of ex-indie rock hipsters interested in surfing the white noise static wave of harsh noise, but who are largely unable to fully devote themselves to the pedal/steel lacerations of an Incapacitants or a Hijokaidan (or who just like the posture of listening to such antisocial music). Having a bunch of lame fans isn't their fault, and certainly many of their fans don't fit this hastily-sketched stereotype - but they are a divisive band, with some connoisseurs treating them like a guilty pleasure and others shunning them outright the second they permit rhythms/vocals/notes to enter the picture. But is the whole debate even worth our energy? How does this latest offering stack up?
I can kind of do without the meandering tracks of ambient amp buzz and wailing, sub-Lethal Weapon saxophone bleating, although "A Million Years" does build to a satisfyingly immolating crescendo and they do evoke that torture room ambience well. They inject some energy, nastiness and life into their screeching on "Human Animal," "Rusted Mange," "The Driller," and the untitled final track - as far as industrial scrape and clank goes, this species of brain numbing crunch seems acceptable. The liner notes offer a sort of predictably odd bit of photomontage, like Hannah Höch as raised by schizophrenic (eponymous?) wolves.
I can appreciate and applaud the high modernist dedication of a Masonna or even a Whitehouse, but bands like Wolf Eyes seem to want it both ways - serving up the supposed avant garde while clutching absently with one hand or tentacle to the rock continuum. They do deserve points for dynamic balance between their mood pieces and their messy outbursts, but neither extreme does much for me here. I hear these guys are Negative Approach fans - I wish this record had some of their desperate intensity. In the final analysis, this is the kind of music that I imagine will thrill some regardless of what I say, but I'm sorry to say I really can't see the point in it. It's obvious that their own freak scene entrances the music makers, and while that's well and good it precludes some of the broader community that dedicated rock bands or even harsh noisists can achieve. But how rad is it that in 2006, Sub Pop is still on top of the latest youth fixation?
