BODY COLLECTOR "Blood Worship" (ESR)

This Body Collector release has been sitting on my "to review" stack for a while, and I thought for sure that Epicene Sound would have sold out of it by now. Lo, according to the ESR catalog there are still copies to be had by a lucky few. Body Collector is the solo guise of Khristopher from Royal Oak, Michigan's own chain thrashers Villa Valley, and though "Blood Worship" isn't a far cry from the duo's work it will sate your average appetite for destruction. "Incessant Sciolism" is a satisfying mix of thunderous walls, hiss and furious scrap metal lashings. Oddly enough a snippet of a jazz recording barely forces its way into the mix, perhaps to add a layer of confusion or just to illustrate the vacuum-like power of noise, sucking in all other sound and all the light. The B-side "Dead Lord" takes a while to catch the same inertia, focusing solely on contact mics and metal before a dog barks and a low rumbling overwhelms the speakers. Then on back to that distorted, horrid mess you love (well, I do anyway). "Tempered in blood and tempered by lightning" as a dead Man once said. Nice cover design as per usual with this label, in color (red, naturally) on matte paper.