Review: Godhole vs Crozier - Anthrophobia

Godhole can’t excavate their fury quick enough. It’s all too fast, too frenetic. Crozier’s noise starts to spit through the seams as the pressure tips into excess: funnelled between the guitars in thin jets, erupting in mini-volcanoes upon the surfaces of snare drums, smothering voices in sandpaper blankets. In the case of the shorter pieces (such as “The Ape”, which rumbles past in a mere eight seconds), noise and powerviolence become inseparable – feedback strangles the screams and mangled synthesisers wedge themselves amidst the riffs. Combined, the artists enact a level of rage that resides beyond the reach of music alone. Where dissonance and blastbeats can only pummel and twist music into uglier shapes, the horrible spew of Crozier obliterates the connection to music altogether. This is aggression unhinged from the civility of melody and tempo; rage breaking free from rationale.

The whole thing is over in seven minutes. In fact, so relentless are the opening five that the record’s final movements are dogged by aerobic lethargy; the riffs stagger between doom and frantic punk, with harsh noise occasionally gushing like blood from a fresh wound, draining both Godhole and Crozier of any residual vigour. For those last few seconds, the record collapses into aimlessness. Screams whirl cyclonically as distortion gushes over the guitars, drums reduced to a muffled jackhammer that judders somewhere beneath. It’s a powerful crescendo, but an inevitable one. Anthrophobia was always destined to reduce into a state of impotence and waste.