Controlled Bleeding
Songs From the Drain

THE REVIEW

Controlled Bleeding, a perpetually schizophrenic entity, always in search of something else, moves within vast sonic territories, stirring and confusing the deep and murky waters in which they constantly revel.

At the beginning of their career, one might have thought they identified a Bostonian trio (later moved to New York) of industrial-noise roots that, with monumental albums like "Knees And Bones" and "Body Samples," razed everything that was power electronics up to that point, infusing it with an emotiveness and tangible sense of pain previously almost unknown to a genre as devastating as it was austere and alienating. The continuation of their story would reveal ever more eclectic musicians, a vast discography capable of spanning a myriad of genres, engulfing and making their own ambient, gothic, prog, dub, jazz, Traxian industrial rock, psychedelia...

Albums like "Headcrack," "Trudge," "Music For Gilded Chambers," and the melodic, eccentric, and disorienting "Core," among many others, showcase a group in perpetual search of sonic change, tossing the listener from one completely different album to another, with few constants, perhaps only the experimentation attitude and the wonderful voice of Joe Papa.

The album in question, while being somewhat of a middle ground between an album and a collection of tracks left out from other recordings between '85 and '87, represents one of the happiest chapters of their discography, as well as a kind of litmus test of the various styles deployed by the group. There's everything and more, at least of the styles experimented with up to that point.

"Ash And Stone," a sacred profane invocation, is a shroud soaked in death and the scent of incense, with Joe Papa's operatic voice as harrowing as ever. There are "On Eating Garbage" and "Music For Glass And Bone," overflowing industrial-noise mutilations as black as pitch, a track like "Red Stigmata," a magnificent goth-rock in melodic construction and pathos, in "Under Heaven," the Swans of Cop are transported from degraded streets and filthy suburbs to burning Gothic cathedrals, "Music For Earth And Water (Parts 1-3)" lives on suspended, disorienting, sinisterly idyllic and lulling atmospheres, laden with psychedelic fragrances.

An elusive and ever-changing entity is Controlled Bleeding, perpetually aimed at ecstatic sensory destabilization.