Tomahawk
Anonymous

When it begins, it almost feels like hearing "Mit Gas," even in the title: a "War Song" worthy of the "Birdsong" that opened that record four years ago; it starts with atmospheric sounds, sonic landscapes, towards dusk, with rain in the background, although the main sensation this record gives is a suffocating heat, scorching sun in a desert of dry bushes, a vision suggested by the splendid inner artwork of the CD, possibly better than all previous ones.

In reality, things are very different from four years ago, Rutmanis is no longer with them, sidelined first by the Melvins and then by Tomahawk, he could team up with Oliveri to found an association for marginalized bassists; it should seem like a Denison record then, since the hatchet is his creation, but that’s not the case, this work exudes experimentation and atmospheric quality like Patton can only do when there are the right people suggesting splendid visions to him, so this is a record born out of a unique collaboration between the two with a Stanier who has never been so rough and tribal, he who had accustomed us to the perfection of the rhythmic interlocks of Battles, who have played by engaging with something at least original: the music of late 1800s Native Americans.

The result is a long journey through the deserts of Texas or thereabouts, amidst fires, totems, and ceremonies. Every piece is a rearrangement of very old songs from the Native American tradition, and the results are wonderfully diverse from one another. "Mescal Rite1" is a splendid tribal dance, "Song of Victory" is a technically free descent filled with choirs and screams, "Cradle Song" is a slow and funereal procession with breathtaking crescendos between canyons and cliffs. It ranges from simple soundscapes equally soaked in the antiquity of the percussion and the modernity of wonderful samples to experimental episodes with a clearly Pattonian flavor: "Sun Dance" could easily fit on The Director's Cut, and no one would be surprised, they would just be asking which movie featured that Mohican or Sioux chorus. There's everything, even the mocking and serene progress of "Antelope Ceremony": dozens of Native Americans drinking in a circle, eating an antelope before dancing around a fire, even a wonderfully lonely guitar arpeggios "Long, Long Weary Day" that closes the dances, there's everything, with that very visible connecting thread that manages to unite all these episodes so distant under the aegis of sun-roasted and proud faces, with braids and wisdom.

Anyone who expected a boring and needlessly experimental record, just good for surrounding even more their respective auras of mysticism and exasperated intellectualism and snobbery, is grandly mistaken, "Anonymous" cannot be compared to the two previous records, it is something completely different and disconcerting. There probably won’t be any concerts, everyone with their own time cards to stamp, some with the U.S.S.A., some with Battles, some with the rest of the world, even with your condominium, but this record is fantastic. If before Tomahawk could be considered among the most musical and canonical groups of Patton, now it is no longer the case, but it is all a pleasure.