Deathprod ‘Dark Transit’ 12” (Smalltown Supersound)

The release this year of ‘Occulting Disk’ marked the end of a 15 year wait for a new Deathprod full-length, a near-silence punctuated by occasional projects which gave no real confidence that Helge Sten was planning to again unleash his Audio Virus in any type of cataclysmic quantity. The unforgiving may hear the austerity to ‘Occulting Disk’ and wonder why it took 15 years to gestate, but the black majesty of Deathprod was never so concentrated or engulfing as in the project’s return. The new double LP reflects the dispassionate and unrelenting menace at the heart of a black oil slick, which uses unsuspecting currents to form engulfing shapes of suffocating sable. ‘Dark Transit’ is the surprise follow-up, a limited EP released for Helge’s performance at the Oslo Opera House on 10 November 2019 after which the remaining copies found their way overseas.

“Transit 1” layers an unsettling lower tonal drone with a flickering high register, newer drone undulations entering the piece to tilt it in all directions until the vessel is capsized and subsumed by the nighttime waves – only to find lingering high tones attaching to the sinking lifeless mass, slowed screeches of the final gasps of oxygen trailing from the corpse of the piece as it sinks to the bottom.

“Transit 2” is almost impenetrably dark; a single low synth line modulated and reverberated slowly and almost undetectably before rising slightly in register and with a glimmer of light, allowing shrouded tones to break off – only to wither and fall into the shadows again – before itself retreating slowly. “Transit 3” then quickly closes the second side by reminiscing the grim weather patterns of ‘Morals and Dogma’, a blustering tonal expectoration which arcs while wavering in a cross-wind, pungent as its edges singe while in momentum, then chilling as it falls to the ground.

I was all in once I heard Deathprod in 2004, so anything stylistically on message is going to be embraced. These new recordings do make the listener work a little harder to extract that same lifeless joy, but it’s there: in the unflinching black palette, and in the finer details eking out of the central viral pit Helge Sten lays down so expertly.

The same tundral bleakness shapes ‘Dark Transit’ as it did ‘Occulting Disk’, again distilling Deathprod to its concentrated essence. The project has always shrouded itself capably, Helge’s concoction of electronics unremittingly dismal and dark – however the project’s return seems all the more inwardly inspired, drawing strength from its own minimalism and taking ink from its own unbeating heart. ‘Occulting Disk’ is described as an ‘anti-fascist ritual’, however the answer isn’t political correction but decimation: we are all equal in death. I was always going to champion ‘Dark Transit’, but fuck it I do so with no doubt.