The Book Of Knots
Garden Of Fainting Stars

THE REVIEW

Disassembling various monsters/chimeras to create an even larger one, clad in velvet and metals unknown to humans. All of this is encapsulated in the Book Of Knots, together with the components Carla Kihlstedt (the velvet), Tony Maimone, Joel Hamilton, and Matthias Bossi (the metals) who together weave an embroidery of rare horrific manifestation.

It begins with the martial stride of "Microgravity", an enormous drum, and a snare that cracks like a gunshot, with Carla composing a melodic castle with her voice over guitars of almost heavyCrimsonian origin, with light electric echoes hidden by distortions that tend to emerge at the end and a pop chorus that is to die for. "Drosophila Melanogaster" is evil. The piano goes hand in hand with synthetic noises from lost factories over expressionless lands, lead from the sky, mercury on the tongue, it's the suave voice of sir Blixa Bargeld that accompanies the coffin, along with Carla's feral violin, it's a silent crescendo, nervousness sneaks into Blixa's voice, until the explosion on tiptoe, metal melody, desert choirs under the end. Hosting the event (since the record is released by his Ipecac) is his majesty Mike Patton on "Planemo" with a vocal line that comes directly from the '50s (reminiscent of Mondo Cane), lacquered with Nosferatu-like noir, with symphonic interference from a radio diffused over time, opening on crooked guitars that sporadically punctuate a sidereal melody, while the Master writes his story on sheets of space pop, one of his best performances of this genre in recent times. Elsewhere we find direct offspring melodies from Idiot Flesh, disturbing and mad lullabies, infernal voices, on acoustic guitars colliding with industrial electric guitars and voices of ethereal suffering ("Obituary For The Future" is the mausoleum of the entire album). 

Quality A-list horror stuff.