Orchestra of Constant Distress
Distress Test

Joachim Nordwall doubles down. In January, the new and last album from the Skull Defekts was a grand finale for a band that, with the release of "Peer Amid" in 2011, had achieved enormous success and started a remarkable chapter in the history of the loudest rock of recent years. The experience ended, as is known, due to the various commitments of the different band members, and with the release of a final eponymous LP.

The record was perhaps the group's best, along with the already mentioned "Peer Amid," a sign that artistically Joachim Nordwall and his companions still had and have something to say. I thus welcomed with great enthusiasm the releases of the Orchestra of Constant Distress, a supergroup led by Nordwall and completed by his old adventure partner Henrik Rylander, as well as Anders Bryngelsson and Henrik Andersson. The album is practically a double LP, released by Riot Seas Records and came out on February 23. One could practically define it as a compilation, as the record resumes the content (still homogeneous) of two tapes published in recent months.

Comparable to avant-jazz episodes of the Colin Stetson or Ex Eye type and to releases like the latest from the duo composed of Tashi Dorji and Tyler Damon, starting from abstract expressionist premises and an avant-garde approach, this LP is a jagged object: the tracks are vigorous and overwhelming compositions of a noise character and not derived from the New York no-wave forms, and at times they might perhaps recall that monolithic grandeur of Michael Gira. The sound in this case seems more like a kind of inner revolution: rather than truly explosive, it seethes like a kind of primordial magma and instead of striving to reach a kind of climax, these have that repetitive and obsessive character, guided by a virulent and enveloping rhythm section.

It might not be pleasing to everyone: it is certainly an album far from any easy-listening characterization and yet it cannot be conceived as a unicum, because the song form is not denied, on the contrary, it is exalted and pushed to its maximum consequences. Take it or leave it then, and I tell you that I take it eagerly without worrying for now if there will be a sequel and in which direction it will go. Even though we know that in general, what we call "primordial soup" always defines itself under some new form and dimension.