Crucifix
Dehumanization

THE REVIEW

Art, including music, has always been distinguished by different characters, those "cultured" ones who use all their knowledge in the field to convey their message in the best possible way, and those who have very little knowledge, who use instinct to express their feelings.

The Crucifix belonged to the latter group.

It's easy to say that nothing surprises us anymore, but even back then, to be precise, there was not much. In the genre, there had been the Discharge, for instance, yet, in their own way, Crucifix managed to hit the mark equally, bringing a breath of fresh air to what had already been done a short time before, bringing to light human agony and the injustice of war through music.

No one like Sothira Pheng, a singer of Cambodian origin, had more right to sing about so many things, perhaps the title of their work already explained a lot: "Dehumanization", an album that in the early '80s was a classic of the Californian Hardcore Punk scene.

Here, the tracks on this record become much more than ordinary music, the cold and bloody touch of the instruments unconsciously transmits to us a war film, I see uncivil tortures projected in my mind, tanks crossing a field of flesh, blood, and mute cries of fear. The vocal part, without taking a single breath, screams in the name of hatred all the filth evoked by man.

To make myself clear, I repeat the name Discharge, they too with distorted guitar noises and relentless drum beats a few years earlier wanted to represent the same things, but the idea I perceive is different: for example, with "Why" I heard an active protest, devoid of frills but in its way far from the battlefields, whereas with "Dehumanization" I feel present. Fast music, superconfusing, hammer blows to the temples, rough and monotonous riffs, whistles and chaos, everything, as disgusting and euphonious as it may seem, manages to blend excellently with the musical line, a perfect transformation of noise into sound. Similar tracks flow on the turntable, bringing to light an old-school Hardcore Punk tinged with a touch of Noise. I perceive a strange effect when I listen to "Indo China" or "Three Miles to Oblivium" (two of my favorite tracks); the tight rhythms, instead of pushing me into a frantic pogo, seem to suck the air from my lungs, leaving me helpless, fixed towards the white walls of the room. "Punk-hypnosis", "the musical Stendhal syndrome", I'm astonished by all this skillful noise and these raw words, partly trapped in the thought of the horror that is war. We can say Hardcore but we can also say poetry, we can call it terror, we can call it in some cases exaggeration, but as much as I want to be carefree and cheerful, listening to this record gives me that right dose of hatred to face a society steeped in filth.

Fourteen songs pass, twenty-three minutes of music and the effect is over, the Crucifix have finished playing, while the needle moves toward the end of the record I realize how much silence surrounds me...