Attrition: The Black Mariah – UK – CD [2024]

1. The Promise
2. The Great Derailer
3. The Switch
4. The Pillar II
5. The Alibi
6. The Reprisal
7. The Zero Hour
8. The Black Maria

One of the best things about attaining a ripe age is in eventually learning just what the scope of ones’ ignorance is. Case in point being the new album of Attrition. A band with a 44 year lifespan that I was completely ignorant of until last month. I had been exposed to bands like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire at the dawn of the 80s and by the mid-decade saw me pursuing the adjacent music threads of Industrial, Goth, and EBM until the point where I got tired of bands that had a vocalist singing through a distortion pedal. Ogre music, I called it.

By the mid 90s I moved on, keeping only that music which I felt was a cut above and jettisoning the rest out of the Record Cell airlock. But in all of that time, I swear I never once heard a mention of Attrition. Meanwhile, the band has obviously outgrown the limits of genre expectation as evidenced in their new album, “The Black Mariah.” Giving us a multifaceted blend of sounds that resisted easy categorization.

The opening track “The Promise” was a brief, unsettling cocktail of saw wave synths and the male and female voices intoning “be silent” over a pulsating heart-like beat and concluding on Mr. Bowes uttering “speak…when spoken to.”

“The Great Derailer” began with a spoken word vocal of a disquieting nature over seemingly random loops that eventually resolved themselves into a driven, even cooking groove, replete with enervated violins and squelchy synths. The modus operandi of the group’s deep, insinuating male vocals with women singing free and operatic soprano vocal lines throughout made for a left-field vibe that wouldn’t quit. At times I was reminded of the bracing juxtaposition of operatic femme vocals in the remix of Cabaret Voltaire’s “Yashar.” With that precedent exploded to create a coherent micro-genre that resembled little else.

“The Switch” began with a tinkling piano pregnant with melodrama [courtesy of Annie Hogan] and a voice sample of “standing / falling” under which a skittering beat bolted off of the starting blocks to attain a surprisingly rhythmic bite via the urgent drum loops. There was a touch of acid on the synths as the juxtaposition of the song’s many textures ensured a lack of boredom when Attrition were on the sound system.

The braking train foley effects of “The Pillar II” found violins and yet more operatic backing vocals almost attaining a harmony on the instrumental interlude. The train recordings returned to vie with the violins and ultimately the found vocals of the song’s conclusion.

“The Alibi” featured a music box intro overtaken by sawing violins and glitch elements among the hi-hat beats. The Vocals were a bracing combination of split octave vocals with founding member Martin Bowes operating at the lower end with his whispered, almost spoken vocals while the cluster of female vocalists blended almost operatically to form a hive vocal not easy to ascribe membership to. The song’s perverse arrangement suggested the head spinning notion of Tom Waits duetting with Nina Hagen.

The “speak/be silent” samples from “The Promise” returned as did mournful violin in “The Reprisal.” In an album of highly contrasting textures, this piece devolved into random synthesizer elements juxtaposed against peals of metal seemingly undergoing stresses.

The first guitar chords I can recall hearing in this album made their presence felt on “The Zero Hour.” Filtered vocals of a woman commenting on the emotions suggestive of a dystopic social order, like the public announcements of a woman who was a fascist leader as “the voice of truth.” As guitar ganks and “taaaaangs” of metallic percussive noise eventually drowned out the piano. Eventually building into a crescendo of noise as the loop “the voice of truth” continued until the song’s abrupt fade.

While the musical blend was of largely acoustic elements dusted subtly with electronics enough to queer the mix enough to prevent pigeonholing, the concluding title track pivoted to proffer grinding industrial synths vying with keening wails of female expression vocals. Creating a throbbing, grimy wash of sound until the storming percussion that eventually manifested a rhythmic power that accentuated the hypnotic swirl of the music.

“The Black Mariah” left us with an unsettling program of many disparate textures coalescing into something more closely allied with painting or collage instead of conventional song structures. It’s a far cry from any expectation of “Industrial” music as the overall vibe was more closely allied with the emergence of the actual Industrial Revolution era than with leather clad men in Doc Marten boots. It’s a grimy, sooty sound with an abundance of x-chromosomes present with women far outnumbering the men on the album.

The many female vocalists added an abstract and disquieting patina of unease in that their voices were used in a manner not unlike Ligeti’s choirs on the “2001: A Space Odyssey” soundtrack. As blocks of detuned sound juxtaposed for maximum unease. With Martin Bowes maintaining pockets of his deep bass whispering at strategic points throughout along with his synthesizers. The violins and cellos of Marietta Fox and Kris Force, respectively dominated the soundscape here with guitar as played by Ian Arkley relegated to the margins of the dense and monochromatic tone.

If you are in the mood for something that a far cry from Rock music and probably has its closest comparisons in Tom Waits with rogue Scott Walker DNA injected into the mix, then the various packages [all priced to please] can see you putting this in your own personal Record Cell for as little as £6.99 for a DL or the 140g black vinyl LP for a sensible £20.99! With cassettes and CDs in between. DJ hit that button.

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