Viral Lode- Single Channel Pneumatics

Artist:Viral Lode
CD Title:Single Channel Pneumatics
Label: Self-released
Reviewer:Richard Edge
Date: 8-01-06

It’s good to stop at times and raise a few questions, to ponder and re-evaluate matters. Shall we start with industrial music? Given the etymological background of the word industrial, it is perhaps a little unusual to find young men in black eyeliner bemoaning their turgid existence over the beat of a programmed drum machine being tagged with the label industrial. The last time I was in an industrial situation in a factory, it sounded rather different.

Viral Lode however manages with certain aplomb to hit the nail on the head when it comes to industrial music. Maybe that should be road drill on the skull, since at times that is what Viral Lode sounds like. This is experiential avant-garde noise terror at its best. To fully appreciate this you need to be so deeply enamoured by true industrial noise that you’d rather visit a steel mill than a NIN concert. Imagine the sound actually inside a car engine and you’re nearly there. EP highlights are the crushing assaults that are “Lock Down” and “Chromagenic”

Vocals? Forget about that, god there’s no guitars as far as I can tell. Don’t get me wrong however, this doesn’t lack validity purely because it doesn’t adhere to scene norms, on the contrary for me it actually gains kudos for this.

Although Viral Lode is simply the combination of a demonic mind, one man, and a laptop, it’s reassuring to find people out there who actually do make us stop, think and wonder once in a while.

www.virallode.tk

www.myspace.com/virallode