Bondage 2010—2019 cassette
BONDAGE is a solo noise garage project from Peru, and this tape collects about a decade’s worth of demo releases. The first track starts out with a drum machine and distorted bass groove that gives off “Cough / Cool” vibes with spoken-sung vocals. Then comes the haunted house keyboards. Yikes. The rest of the tape more or less follows this pattern: fast drum beat, repetitive bass lines, reverbed guitar with tons of flange, and spoken or screamed vocals. To be fair, there is enough decent feedback damage to call this noise or maybe industrial, but I never really feel the menace that I expect from those genres. There is a SUICIDE cover, which I can hear as a major inspiration (I’ll stick with the original, though). There is some CHRISTIAN DEATH energy here as well. I don’t know about the lyrical content, as the singing is in Spanish, but the cover art and accompanying zine feature cut-and-paste artwork of wild animals, explicit gay imagery, and blood. Many of these tracks stretch past the four-minute mark, which tests my patience for what seems like a well-intentioned bedroom project. Maybe check it out if you are into deathrock or industrial, but it’s a pass for me.