SEVEN MINUTES OF NAUSEA
Collection CDr
PRESS / REVIEWS
Reviewed on CRUCIAL BLAST
http://www.crucialblast.net/
Noisecore, by definition, is already about as musically extreme as you can get. It's the next step beyond grindcore, taking a sound that is already brutally violent and barbaric and blenderizing the blastbeats and hyperfast riffing and screamed vocals into a gale force of pure noise. Bands like Anal Cunt, Gore Beyond Necropsy, Fear Of God, Pile Of Eggs, Sore Throat, and Aunt Mary were all key figures in the noisecore underground and pushed blastbeat- driven chaos into a realm of abstraction that ended up being closer to the Japanese noise scene and the most brutal ends of the free jazz spectrum than anything resembling "metal". But even in the final immolating blast furnace of noisecore, there was no other band that approached the warped otherness of Seven Minutes Of Nausea. This band first formed in Australia by members Mick Hollows and Scut in 1985, but after Hollows relocated to Europe in the early 90's, it essentially became a solo project with Mick handling all vocal duties. One of the things that seemed to seperate 7MON (as they are generally referred to in short) from the rest of the noisecore hordes was 7MON's total lack of goofiness. Let's be honest - when you are in a band like Anal Cunt that plays at those levels of speed and aggression and noise, there's going to be at least a small amount of absurdity in what you are doing. This, however, was never the case with 7MON. The sonic annihilation that Mick Hollows created is the ultimate endtime music, each "song" consisting of a four-second blast of rumbling bass guitar noise, gutteral ranting that sounds like the muttering of a murderous derelict, feedback, and (sometimes) scraping percussive noise. Hundreds of these miniature blasts would be strung together on a 7MON release, connected by ominous dark ambient electronics, strains of creepy orchestral music, abrasive Industrial scraping, clattering metal, and whispers in the dark. This made for some of the strangest, most sinister sounding music I have ever heard, totally unlike anything else in the grind or noise canons. 7MON's releases have primarily been tape and 7" projects that date back to the late 80's, and these releases are almost impossible to find now. Thank god for R.O.N.F. The Spanish label has just put together this new pro-manufactured CDR that does a great job of collecting some of Seven Minutes Of Nausea's material from a handful of early 90's releases, including unreleased material from the 1991 EP Noise Of The Rose, their side of the 1992 split tape with Audicion Irritable, a live performance from 1994 that appeared on the No More Music compilation cassette, their tracks from the Rudi Rat Vol.4 compilation CD that came out on Ecocentric in 1992, and their tracks from the Master Of Noise comp LP on S.O.A. Records. Almost an hour of 7MON! Limited to only 99 hand numbered copies.
Reviewed on TERROR
http://www.terror.lt/
This one's not the first noisecore release that I review and it's not the first time when I doubt if I manage to review it correctly. Noisecore is unexplored space for me and I constantly promise myself to get into this genre more, but perhaps there's no such big need that this is still a promise to myself. Though I'm absolutely green in the genre, I know Seven Minutes of Nausea. They are one of the bands that should be known by default if you ever wondered what's there, further than grindcore. The same "known-by-default" status would be Anal Cunt, weird Japanese shyzo bands with Gore Beyond Necropsy at the front lines and so on. Seven Minutes of Nausea started in ninth decade in Australia. Despite their long existence, they haven't released that much albums. Almost all of these were cassettes and 7". This CDr, released by Spanish R.O.N.F. label is the only release in such format. Old Noises of the Roses is compilation of old and remastered, not published tracks, tracks from compilations etc. All of them were created during 1991-1993. Length of this album is almost an hour. A more or less common template for the tracks would be - attack of guitar, drums, bass + voice that lasts for a second or two, then several seconds of conditional silence, samples or something like that and the attack again. All these short bursts are blended with ambient or noise track that plays in the background. By the structure of songs it seems as if these would be songs in songs, like matrioschkas. E.g. all the track is covered with ambient and under that (or above that perhaps), many short bursts of sounds are placed. The first track in this CDr is unused recordings from 1991 record. It's being the longest, but also the nicest/most interesting track to me. Weird multilayered song. You hear violins, synth, bells, rudiments of melody, whispers floating in the background. As opposed to that - constant outbursts of feedback, distortion, voice and instruments. Strange schizophrenic atmosphere. Sometimes it seems as if three separate tracks would be playing at the same time, but in a second these seemingly separate sounds blend into one monolith and you wouldn't even dare to think that it could be other way. The second song is from the split in 1992. Background is not that dreamy as in the first track. Darker and gloomier, but hypnotism remains the same. Live performance that goes third is the noisiest of all. Feedbacks, rough pulling of bass strings, disconnecting cables and crowd. The rest two tracks are the shortest ones, taken from compilations. The last one seems as if it'd be oi! skinhead tape, just every couple of seconds were deleted. oi!oi! and the sound breaks, burst of bass and drums and break. A rather complicated, but interesting record. Thanks goes to R.O.N.F. label which released this CDr and gave opportunity to taste a bit of history. First edition was quickly sold out so if there are some of the reissues left, I'd advice not to wait too long for fans of noisecore. I don't promise that I'll be listening to this record often, but I was happy about the possibility to get my ears on records of legendary 7MON.
