Iron Lung - White Glove Test

"music" cover

Power violence's most forward thinking act are back with their ambitious new album entitled White Glove Test. Further pushing the band's ammonia soaked aesthetic and affinity for jangley Ginnesque guitars in a blender, Iron Lung, create a claustrophobic and energetic album. The album has three incarnations: a "music" version, which is guitars, vocals, drums; a "noise" version which runs the same length as the music version and sounds like a backdrop for a Lynch film; and then the "together" version in which both the "noise" and the "music" versions play simultaneously; creating, for me, the best version.

Vemod - Venter på stormene

The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs

The source of human thought its tribute brings

Of waters--with a sound but half its own,

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

"Mont Blanc" by Percy Shelley 

Is it too early to have an album of the year?* Maybe - but, I'm willing to put money down that come December of this year (and every year) I'll still be spinning Vemod's Venter på stormene and getting lost in it like it's the first time I've heard it. Loyal readers might recall me talking about this one somewhat recently and how excited I was with only the first track released. I can't recall the last time I obsessed so much over one song from an album that hadn't even been released yet and I can't recall a time when my expectations have been met and further smashed by the eventual album.