Photo courtesy of Wolf Eyes
The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.
Notorious noise terrorists Wolf Eyes have struck again. The intrinsically mutable Michigan group — currently the duo of Nate Young, who founded the project in the mid ’90s, and John Olson (Inzane Johnny) who joined at the turn of the millennium — have slowed their pace since their disgustingly prolific early days, but they still put out plenty of music, much to the chagrin of the listening public. Their latest attack — which follows the devastation of FEEDBACK & DRUMS, a “split” tape with SPYKES (another of Olson’s monikers) that made its grim mark in the ground this past American Independence Day — is a three-pronged attack: “Exploding Time,” a sinister single released digitally on Bandcamp and physically on lathe-cut vinyl, arrived Thursday (October 6); and Dumpsters & Attitude, a seven-track suite offered up as an extremely limited (and already sold-out) CD, dropped the following day alongside another lathe cut titled “Time Garbage.”
Dumpsters & Attitude is the most exciting multi-track project Wolf Eyes have put out in quite some time. But for the sake of the hallowed Songs You Need column, I’ll contain my commentary exclusively to “Time Garbage,” the standout “song” of the bunch. Like many of Wolf Eyes’ scorched-earth campaigns, it’s most notable for its all-out aural assault, but it’s got plenty of depth past that. Its underlying beat is an industrial rhythm that moves methodically, like the packing blade of a dump truck slowly churning through wet garbage. Above this vibrating brown hum, screeches of static split the air before they’re replaced by a mutilated, incomprehensible top vocal line and a lower voice that falls somewhere between the flatulence of a sick animal and an ancient human’s final wheezing breaths.
Listen to “Time Garbage,” “Exploding Time,” and Dumpsters & Attitude below.
