Petbrick get their industrial groove on
Liminal
ROCKET RECORDINGS
Iggor Cavalera goes in for a mind-scrambling industrial mash-up
IN YEARS PAST, if a band issued an album that incorporated influences and sounds from across spectrums and genres, record execs would hit the panic button. Many readers will recall the industry furore over Faith No More’s diverse masterpiece, Angel Dust. These days, the worry is largely about online and streaming algorithms choking out a band like Petbrick and an album like Liminal, because it’s a record that doesn’t sit still.
Comprised of Wayne Adams (Big Lad/Johnny Broke) and Iggor Cavalera (Sepultura/Absent In Body), Petbrick make “horrible noises” and could be considered the directionless, residual material that didn’t stick to the proverbial wall. Another viewpoint sees the duo’s output as highly artistic cut-and-paste intricacy. Either way, Wayne and Iggor throw the rulebook out the window like Putin does journalists (allegedly), in their deconstruction of musical linearity, simple categorisation and creative methodology.
A solid percentage of their second album’s front-end utilises dismantled breakbeats and pulse-pounding gabba rhythms. Arboria sets clipped guitar and electronic percussion to herky-jerky tribal rhythms, Pigeon Kick’s assailing drone coalesces around a tapered thrash beat before Lysergic Aura slows things down for a Run The Jewels-type rap.
The album gets weirder and more abrasive as it goes on. Damballa is the sound of Slayer and Nitzer Ebb rehearsing in a Buddhist temple and Ayan is essentially a drum circle sired by Atari Teenage Riot instead of hippies. The guest appearances from Converge’s Jake Bannon and Neurosis’s Steve Von Till aren’t outliers on their own as Grind You Dull and Reckoning are appropriate songs for them, but they add more fuel to Liminal’s scattered fire. Which isn’t a bad thing, as the album kicks ass; it just doesn’t do so in a straight line.