Chokebore
Black Black

THE REVIEW

With logistical base in the ocean-emergent island lands of Hawaii, the audio-quartet in question represents the least cheerful, sunlit, and more noise rock emaciated acoustic entity to which the tanned/multicolored original land has ever given birth.

After the semi-caustic yet by no means disagreeable beginnings at Amphetamine Reptile - the first three works came from those recording coordinates - Mr. Balthazar and the audio-suffering congregation, having gone independent, embarked with the progression of subsequent works, and particularly effectively in the doubly dark self-produced trabajo, on an artistic journey replete with intriguing audio-sacrifice and scarcely inclined towards seeking banal rock public-consensus.
Admirable as well as courageous sound-attitude established, especially in a period - the second half of the nineties - that gifted many moments of glory, and in the most financially successful and “fortunate” cases, also vile pecuniary gain to many proto-realities scarcely audio-convincing, if not absolutely devoid of ideas, although vainly clamorous.

The fourth work, boasting a chronological mark of 1998, published by the sound-cathartic company, fully manifests as the peak and small/great (master)work of the overall appreciable as well as qualitatively somewhat fluctuating Chokebore sound-parabola. The once very stern as well as swollen rhythms undergo an unexpected and noticeably positive process of audio-spectralization, increasingly bestowing upon the surprised eavesdropping earlobes often rock-ectoplasmic timbres instead: vocals desperately subdued and mournful yet also unhealthily melodic, experienced and shadowy as well as significantly fitting and effective.

The basic sonic framework does not change drastically: saturated bass/guitar wanderings intermingled with a rhythmic and often pulsing present and frequently propulsive heart; simply assigns another different purpose to its expressive mode: the lethal as well as initiatory “Speed Of Sound” indisputably clarifies the suffering trajectories that will permeate the fifty-plus minutes of magnificently intense, rarefied, and episodically abrupt/strong sad-core content in the fourth Chokeboriano chapter; the spectacularly introspective “Every Move A Picture” or the troubled and barely organ-soiled “Never Feel Sorry Again” are magnificently successful in this regard; the tense “You Are The Sunshine Of My Life” or the saturated yet brief and liberating “Distress Signal” represent the gripping last angry residues of a sound that was and from this rugged work will persist to a decreasing extent (not always in the “current” pursued direction, unfortunately).

Lived, personal and at times quietly recalcitrant non-aligned rock of the end of the millennium is what the brave listener finds before them: I would grant it an (attentive) eavesdropping, even though in lost time. Fate Vobis (as standard).