NON
Blood & Flame

Music for the deaf.

Let's be clear from the start that this album does not earn its passing grade from its content, but solely and exclusively from its historical contribution, as an essential piece in defining a certain abnormal form of extremist musical avant-garde: needless to say, we are faced with the most unlistenable thing our ears might encounter.

Active since the second half of the seventies, Boy Rice has undoubtedly had the "merit" of being among the undisputed pioneers of a way of understanding and making music that has ended up leading music to the thin line with non-music: noise.

And it is with this work from 1987 that his art (if we wish to call it that) finds its most accomplished and organic definition: "Blood & Flame" is the manifesto of Boyd Rice, his most representative work, and in it, we find all those elements we will encounter throughout his uninspiring career.

Pure noise, to be clear, an electronics that emancipates itself from any distant melodic reference and makes use and abuse of tape manipulation and overdubbing. Strange, however, how Rice manages to give a very precise and decidedly personal profile to chaos: every piece undoubtedly sounds like NoN, and this at least slightly raises the score, which, again, barely reaches a passing grade.

In fact, Rice's technical and intellectual poverty emerges vividly at every turn: ideas are sketched and not developed at all, making the listening a gratuitous and senseless ordeal, a tour de force that finds no satisfaction or joy.

Nineteen unfinished sketches, vivid flashes of sonic abstractionism, fearsome infernal circles in which to immerse and perish: nothing but orgies of screeches, vitriolic pulsations, nightmares on loop, frustrating in their staticity, rarely struck by electrifying accelerations.

Chaos is, not by chance, the anagram of caso, and Rice's non-music is a primordial and primitive energy vented without inhibitions, brute force untied from any kind of rational control.

Rice's search is aimed at investigating the primordial core of human nature stripped of the casing comprised of the core principles that uphold civil coexistence. It’s a drill that digs into the unexpressed unconscious of Man, Beast, and God together. NoN: a restless artery that traverses the madness of man in all its facets, the hell of war, Hell on earth, where the individual wages a ruthless and desperate struggle for survival, aimed at dominance, alone in a world of violence and brutality, beyond any moral or rational dictate.

War, after all, is a theme dear to Rice, also known for his warmongering and right-wing ideals, and the opener "Fire in the Organism" is the clearest demonstration: a symphony of disconnected noises that, overwhelmed by the accelerating tearing bursts of vague and approximate electronics, simulates a sexual act that will find its orgasm in a grim war scenario, dominated by violent explosions and the roar of machine guns.

The tracks that follow will challenge even the most seasoned listeners: distorted guitars, apocalyptic choirs, exhausting marches, an incessant pounding culminating in Rice's classic of classics, "Carnis Vale": a nightmare of sampled screams that overlap and devour each other in a triumph of insensate violence.

In general, I do not appreciate either Rice or his music, but if some daring masochist wants to really do themselves harm by venturing into the terrible world of Boyd Rice in its most typical form, I certainly believe that one should start right here.

What was that famous warning "...abandon all hope..."?