Factrix
Scheintot

I believe it was 1989 when I bought "Scheintot" by FACTRIX, the original 1981 vinyl edition from Adolescent records, at Disfunzioni Musicali in Rome. On that occasion, I was talking to another guy in the store about Drowning Pool, a band from the Californian trance scene, and he asked me what kind of music Factrix made. I replied, somewhat in difficulty, that I hadn't heard anything like it until then: I took the second-to-last copy and he, with his eyes closed, took the last one. I remember this situation because of the contrast between our appearance and sunny demeanor, which is usually associated with everything except the purchase of a record like "Scheintot" by Factrix. Thirty years later, I understand that such an approach was exorcising, let's see why.

And with this work, Factrix opens a visualization of a place that is of fundamental importance for understanding various things about why we are here and the concrete and constant dangers that influence, deceive, and limit our lives.

And these atmospheres and airs, dark and anguished whispers and vibrations, with an ever-present horror (the dark side of everyone), become the perfect soundtrack to the land we identify as the "lower astral."

The lower astral is the beyond that surrounds you. Umbral, gray area, or intermediate zone, this ground floor is where many find themselves after death. It is the unfinished journey where souls linger that have not managed to go towards the light and cross the threshold to settle in their respective harmonic plane. The inability to enter into the "graces of God" mainly depends on attachment to material life and the non-acceptance of the new condition after death. Selfish souls who have had much from material life and at the moment of passing do not want to give it up, they want to continue sinning. The refusal that goes hand in hand with the desire to continue experiencing those earthly pleasures causes the soul to get stuck in this Land.

A tremendous zone that, through the pain of the ethereal body, as if it were the pain of the physical body, modulates suffering based on the accounts accumulated during earthly existence and performs a preliminary sorting on the individual's karmic debts. So, needless to say, the worse you've been, the more you have to suffer. And remaining in this impasse, these incomplete souls, with nothing to do, torment the reincarnated by subjecting them to unwanted thoughts induced to recreate the pleasures they had in life: all of humanity is subject to this type of possession.

These parasitic astral entities insidiously insinuate themselves into our psyche, causing us to experience sensations that most of the time do not belong to us and that nourish those who suggest them, animating us with negative feelings, harmful behaviors, up to, finding fertile ground, unthinkable levels of atrocity, depending on how vulnerable the targeted individual is.

And therefore, if an obsessive desire, a physical or emotional weakness presents itself on our part... Boom!, the door opens, like inviting a vampire, to the intake of even more entities for sexual deviations, violence, anger, greed, depression, sadness, and so on.

Throughout the nine tracks of the record, the music accompanies us in this hopeless zone marked by agonizingly invasive percussion, medium-chanting spoken word, and the effective evocative use of radio guitar, which proves to be a mediumistic vehicle for exploring this unsettling reality.

Even the title unravels the thread: "Apparent Death," and the musical episodes are also supported by further symbolism with the titles of the "songs": Disturbing Lights - Heavy Breathing - Fine Line... And then the graphics, the texts: everything is disturbing.

The music is a hallucinatory jumble of dark stabs that absolutely cannot be identified with the innocuous labels of dark, gothic, etc. Forget all of that and do not try to make comparisons. Here, things are seriously damn.

As the tracks progress, we are involved in a hallucinatory journey, and the sound of Factrix creates a penetrating aura, a shield of transparent density, because if we were to actually visit these places (and it is possible), we would need to face them protected by non-thinking, which guides us by creating an impersonal filter, allowing us to wander like Dante in this Hell without suffering irreparable consequences. Being able to stop thoughts, breaking down the egoic vision, is the scanner to recognize, inside and outside ourselves, who we really have in front of us so as not to fall into temptation and free ourselves from evil and "know ourselves," having a double effect by consciously discovering the unwanted guest or guests, with a "Peek-a-boo," or even Hiding!, we can also free them, offering a divine service like that scene from "The Lord of the Rings," where in the last episode the future King Aragon, after the victorious battle, frees the captive souls recruited in the "dead zone."

The danger, when you go poking around those parts, is extremely high. You need to have ancient resilience not to fall into temptation and be "captured." Factrix presents us with the possibility of experiencing the observation of our thoughts, trying to finally have the mastery of stopping them at will. And as the sounds unfold, we draw ever closer to the central zone of the Land, a terrible point where the most extreme Evil manifests itself. And that distortion at the end of Phantom Pain, the last piece, is so imbued with horror that we instinctively find ourselves praying for the salvation of our soul: "Even though I walk through the valleys of shadow and death, I will fear no evil for the Lord is with me."

Bond Bergland, Cole Palme, and Joseph T. Jacob put on the "plate" an essential work, where they reveal, without any allusions, the funeral shroud: the world of the living is governed more by the dead than by the living because these thought-forms think, most of the time, in your place. They know the labyrinths of your mind and implement tortuous dynamics that Factrix recognizes, materializing this world on a sonic level, and invite others to see it, seeking a change in attitude to consider the existence of the lower astral, which heavily influences all of us and this entire dimension.

Dead dogs on the floor, in the room boxes full of blood.