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MERZBOW, "RATTUS RATTUS"
Everyone pretty much knows by now that it's pretty useless to review anew Merzbow album. Merzbow is Merzbow, and he'll always be Merzbow, andhe "does" Merzbow better than all of the Merzbow copyists out there,and it will probably always be that way. Aside from a few minorquibbles over whether digital-era Merzbow is better or worse than theoriginal analog Merzbow, there really isn't a whole lot of criticaldivision over Merzbow's output.
Scarcelight
It's almost always noise, loud andaggressive, often with loud percussive slaps to the face thrown in forgood measure. Rattus Rattusis certainly no exception, a cyclone of atonal, shrieking digitalclamor with buffeting, battering ram beats that explore every level ofthe audible range of sound in an attempt to assault the listener on allfronts. The CD seems to have a concept of sorts, the title and thecover art being suggestive of everyone's favorite household pestrodent. This is very different from Matmos' rat concept album (2004's Rat Relocation Program),as instead of sampling said creatures as Matmos did, Masami Akita optsmerely to suggest the presence of the creatures with a series of tinyclaw-scratched noise attacks and high, trebly shrieking. Masami alsoprovides the address of the PETA website on the back of the disc'ssleeve, suggesting that perhaps the album has something or other to dowith animal rights. It would be hard to say where the vegan messagereally comes into Rattus Rattus, unless the album were to betaken as a noisy screed against scientific experimentation on rats.Your guess is as good as mine in this respect. I've come nowhere closeto hearing every Merzbow record, and in fact I probably only own fiveor six CDs, so I'd have a very hard time coming up with a goodcomparison to any of his previous works. This one does have a very nicequality that might warrant repeated listens, however. All three trackscontain enough rapid shifts in tone, frequency, tempo and aggressionenough to keep things dynamic, as opposed to past Merzbow records thathave easily fallen into a background of white noise. There is no chanceof being lulled into complacency while listening to this CD, especiallyduring the final lengthy "Rattus Rattus Suite," which variouslysuggests an Alec Empire DHR-style cyberpunk explosion, an earlyWhitehouse album, something from the noisier end of Ant-Zen, and adigitized grindcore version of an Anal Cunt record or some other suchthrowaway splattercore. This is not to suggest that there is anythinghere that noise fans haven't heard a million times before. As Merzbowrecords go, this is definitely one of them.
Scarcelight
It's almost always noise, loud andaggressive, often with loud percussive slaps to the face thrown in forgood measure. Rattus Rattusis certainly no exception, a cyclone of atonal, shrieking digitalclamor with buffeting, battering ram beats that explore every level ofthe audible range of sound in an attempt to assault the listener on allfronts. The CD seems to have a concept of sorts, the title and thecover art being suggestive of everyone's favorite household pestrodent. This is very different from Matmos' rat concept album (2004's Rat Relocation Program),as instead of sampling said creatures as Matmos did, Masami Akita optsmerely to suggest the presence of the creatures with a series of tinyclaw-scratched noise attacks and high, trebly shrieking. Masami alsoprovides the address of the PETA website on the back of the disc'ssleeve, suggesting that perhaps the album has something or other to dowith animal rights. It would be hard to say where the vegan messagereally comes into Rattus Rattus, unless the album were to betaken as a noisy screed against scientific experimentation on rats.Your guess is as good as mine in this respect. I've come nowhere closeto hearing every Merzbow record, and in fact I probably only own fiveor six CDs, so I'd have a very hard time coming up with a goodcomparison to any of his previous works. This one does have a very nicequality that might warrant repeated listens, however. All three trackscontain enough rapid shifts in tone, frequency, tempo and aggressionenough to keep things dynamic, as opposed to past Merzbow records thathave easily fallen into a background of white noise. There is no chanceof being lulled into complacency while listening to this CD, especiallyduring the final lengthy "Rattus Rattus Suite," which variouslysuggests an Alec Empire DHR-style cyberpunk explosion, an earlyWhitehouse album, something from the noisier end of Ant-Zen, and adigitized grindcore version of an Anal Cunt record or some other suchthrowaway splattercore. This is not to suggest that there is anythinghere that noise fans haven't heard a million times before. As Merzbowrecords go, this is definitely one of them.samples:
