Perhaps recognising that ‘Engineering Analysis Of Inner Death’ was pushing Linekraft toward K2-like junk noise territory, ‘Subhuman Principle’ is more muted, the explosive noise of an LP for Hospital channelled into a rough power electronics shape which shows undoubted awareness and fondness for Tesco’s roster – in particular through a heavier synthesizer presence than previous work, and a militaristic hue to the sounds and compositional implements being utilised.
Side Irrigation takes up arms from the opening chaos of “Archaic”, “No Loss In Weeding Out” settling into a worrisome air-raid siren, with garbled fast-paced speech picked up like the tendrils of isolated radio transmissions – adding urgency to the scenario before explosions of junk metal, heavy synth fumes, and searing vocals crash around the track. The sampled speech disclose militia training drills as the sky darkens and conflict looms on all sides, “Hunger” continuing the guerrilla approach with further siren strafing, sampled voice transmissions and flashes of artillery fire. That hesitancy escalates into utter battlefield confusion on “We Will Burn The Old Grass”, echoing trigger snaps of electronics and steelcap thud building against spoken vocals, while arcs of artillery fire span across the sky: not the obvious evocation of an all-out noise assault, but a carefully plotted replication of heat, recoil, and disorientation.
Side Factory steps away from conflagration, dominated by “Non Human Animal” which wanders through the post-apocalyptic remnants of industry, sirens dying as an ominous synth drone underpins heavy junk metal kicked into long delay, with fires of sulphuric distortion still flickering until met by heavier junk/distortion abuse which covers the track in blinding soot and clingy fallout.
The flash backs don’t take long to return. “Death Is The Surrender” seems to audibly rewind the earlier sirens of Side Irrigation, rife with shellshocked vocals dripping in chemical filtration, reverse impact detonation and fragments of sampled instructions. The only overt rhythmic component to the LP is in penultimate track “Stand Alone” but the effect is terrifying, its returning march of war surrounded by hostile vocals, continued synth strafing and insistent PTSD pulsing; “Modern” then closes with a chilling minimalist refrain and final uproar of vocals and cruel junk metal kicking.
The alignment of Linekraft with Tesco’s familiar phraseology permeates ‘Subhuman Principle’, but without shifting the project off-axis. There’s still plenty of bruisingly resonant junk metal which crashes through the LP – only now it’s the discards of armaments and shell casings, rather than oil drums and wrenches. The result is a re-weighing of Linekraft to meet the pointed hostility of ‘Subhuman Principle’’s subject matter which – given how powerful and redolent the material is – I find entirely sincere.
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