Description

COLOSSLOTH 'The Harmony Knife'

CSR347CD (7 March 2025)

CD in digipak
Barcode: 0641871746583

The fifth album from industrial / esoteric electronic alchemist Colossloth is a concept album based on the writings of professor Ted Kaczynski AKA the Unabomber. It is not about his terror campaign against the industrial society and the rise of technology - but his manifesto "Industrial Society And Its Future" and in particular the elements of "The Power Process".

"With "The Harmony Knife", Colossloth is cutting through to the bone and sinew of Man's chronic, species-specific dissatisfaction, and the causes thereof. He is laying bare humankind's inability to solve its own, self-created problems, to meet its basic needs, and to achieve even those goals clearly within its reach.

What is the fundamental nature of the human condition? Is it one of misery and failure in the face of blissful possibility? Is it the contrary unwillingness to accept that we can become fully realised and contented beings through the success of actualised, idiosyncratic, and often basic goals?

In defining and describing The Power Process, the twisted mind of Ted Kaczynski saw mankind's primal need to struggle for a goal, however small, as necessary for a meaningful life. Indeed, without this elemental piece of the evolutionary struggle, he saw terminal atrophy as the inevitable result.

With "The Harmony Knife", Colossloth seizes these ideas and sonically extrapolates the implications of humankind's failure to satisfy even our most rudimentary needs. He creates an auditory landscape examining our repeated inability to focus our efforts on fundamental goals to ensure even a measure of happiness or contentment. Humanity's inability to live rather than merely exist" (Jake Shell).

CD in matt-laminate digipak.

Track listing:

1. Transfiguration Manifesto (5:08)
2. In Decay You'll Find My Name (5:06)
3. The Harmony Knife (10:05)
4. Silhouette In Kerosene (5:09)
5. Interventionists (4:53)
6. Is Survived By (9:57)

REVIEWS:

"There is no confusion here, this is focused in to the millimetre. Colossloth has created his best work yet.. It's a mass, visceral and alive overtaking all, voices still there but drowned and smothered. The noise that starships communicating make, slow and destructive, then it becomes grinding and unstoppable... Here the focus is on the unexpected and almost unwelcome beauty of the guitar, this fades into weird plucking sounds and static... drone becomes noise which becomes more noise. It's beautiful underneath, it puts into my mind one of those speeded up films of a dead animal decomposing to dust, this is what we have, chaos with brief interludes of calm and beauty and then dust, that’s what we get. Colossloth has triumphed" (Fighting Boredom)

"From its very first moments, The Harmony Knife presents itself as a dense and unsettling work, filled with soundscapes that reflect humanity's chronic dissatisfaction and struggle to find meaning in a hyper-industrialized world.

Musically, the album is a whirlwind of abrasive noise, oppressive drones, and fractured rhythms that evoke a sense of anxiety and alienation... It is a difficult album, both thematically and sonically, but that is precisely its strength. Unlike more accessible experimental electronic works, there are no concessions here - only a raw and desolate exploration of our inability to live rather than merely exist" (Industrial Complexx)

"Colossloth's music [has] a minimalist approach... Next to the guitars, there are a lot of electronics used, feedback, noise, and chaotic drum machines melting down. More dystopian music (see also Satøri), which I guess is part and parcel of the noise world. I am not complaining; again, most welcome in art and not in the real world; thank you very much. It has the furious aggression of punk and if the world needs anything more these it is punk music" (Vital Weekly)