AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): RED RIGHT HAND OF PLAGUE — “TRANSGRESS. SCAR. NUMEN”

(written by Islander)

The cover art for the debut album of Red Right Hand of Plague is unusual, and intriguing, especially if you don’t know anything about the music of this Portland (Oregon) project. So is the album’s title: Transgress. Scar. Numen. So is this statement that appears on the album’s Bandcamp page:

IN THE EYE OF YAHWEH
HER ITHYPHALLIC REJOINDER

But really, I’m not sure anything could adequately prepare (or forewarn) people for what happens within the album. Labeling the music an amalgam of raw black metal and grindcore isn’t wrong, but that doesn’t come close to capturing just how wild the music really is.

In the paragraphs that follow, we’ll try to come closer, just for the hell of it, but you’ll have the chance to get really close because we’re premiering a full stream of Transgress. Scar. Numen today in advance of its October 10 release.

RRHOP begin their album in haunting fashion with “Intromphalos,” a piece that might make you think of listening to a very old phonograph recording of quivering flute or woodwind music in a very old house, possibly with a humming theremin as your companion (in addition to hovering ghosts who are getting increasingly upset).

But from there the EP gets on the rails — and then goes off them. “Cherubs Drowning In Uterine Slop” surges forward with frantically hammering drums, furiously slashing riffage slathered in dirty, mutilating distortion, and vocals that seem to cackle, roar, screech, and become strangled. A guitar seems to convulse in the throes of feverishly deranged ecstasies; gruesome low frequencies undulate; the drumming shifts gears with abandon, sometimes delivering martial beats; an ax might be chopping at a neck.

Speaking of convulsions and ecstasies, the entire song could be thought of that way, even though it does include bits of riffing and rhythmic patterns that set small hooks in the midst of the macabre mayhem. In the context of the EP as a whole, it’s like the opening of a door to an asylum for the criminally insane, the kind of place that mostly got closed down a half-century ago.

“Beheaded For Sacrament” diabolically lurches a little and grooves a little, but in the main it’s another freakout of fretwork and percussion and another vocal horror, albeit with bursts of megaton bombs going off in the low frequencies, imperious chords making imperious announcements, and lots of other clattering and crazy noise in the mix.

“Gilded Solomonic Operator” occasionally pounds as well as blasts, and occasionally sounds like some metal-mangling machine compacting decrepit cars into tiny cubes at a junkyard (those woozy ghosts also seem to return at the end), whereas the back-beats and groaning chords within “Carcase Bared Teeth / Zwischenspiel” might actually get your head nodding in the midst of it spinning out of control (the song title is a two-parter presumably because of the spooky ambient music that brings it to a close).

“QJY-201 Serpent’s Head” sounds brazen, and it brutishly brawls. The shrill soloing spasms are of course berserk, the drum patterns in constant flux (and the fills electric), the cymbal ticks feverish, the vocal cacophonies horrifying, the sudden stops and starts and low-end upheavals un-balancing, and the closing phase a grim head-snapping march.

But really, much the same could be said about “Soil Bedropt With Blood Of Gorgon”, “Rapt In Balmy Mucus”, and the opening phase of the closer “Mortal Lymph Doctrine / Outromantheon” (the closing phase, akin to the intro track, seems to guide us out into the mysteries of the cosmos). They’re all insane. But not just in the sense of derangement — the fretwork and programmed drumwork are also often insanely fast and the fretwork is very agile, creating a technically dazzling fireworks displays.

There are other ways to think of this music besides fireworks (this kind) or visions of asylums where the psychotics have seized control and now run riot through the halls. Maybe some hyped-up madman spinning a Rubik’s cube to line up colors only they can see? Maybe some other kind of whirligig that has lifted off its moorings and is chaotically slicing through whatever is around it? Maybe a demonic bestiary greedily feasting on human flesh?

Transgress. Scar. Numen is not for everyone — but that’s not some brilliant insight, because when it comes to music nothing is for everyone. The more relevant question is who is this for? Who will find such a relentlessly bizarre, violently convulsive, orgiastically jubilant, and sometimes willfully abusive experience appealing? I mean, other than me? I guess we will find out, or rather, now you have a chance to find out:

Transgress. Scar. Numen is largely the work of one Arbitress Moon (guitars, drum programming, vocals), aided with “Atmospheres by Malgeist“. That eye-catching cover art is the work of Nightscape Sorcery, and the album includes additional art by Nyktibius and a logo by Endlich.

It will be released digitally, and on cassette tape by Elf Eggs, on October 10th.

PRE-ORDER:
https://redrighthandofplague.bandcamp.com/album/transgress-scar-numen
https://elf-eggs.bandcamp.com/album/transgress-scar-numen
https://elfeggs43.wixsite.com/eggs/releases/efgg043