CoC : Atrax Morgue - Slush of a Maniac : Review

Atrax Morgue - _Slush of a Maniac_
(Crowd Control, 1997)
by: Andrew Lewandowski (4.5 out of 10)

Although this may be Atrax Morgue's best CD to date, the work of Marco Corbelli, who composes under the pseudonym of Atrax Morgue (and, by the way, also owns Slaughter Productions), has never impressed me, and _Slush of a Maniac_ fails to evince his supposed talent. Just as with all of his other digitized (a few of his numerous cassette releases are comparatively memorable) output, _SoaM_ never evokes the homicidal ambiance implied on his CD covers. Corbelli structures his music (quasi noise, perhaps?) around the juxtaposition of silence - a singular sonic pattern if not a complete absence of sound - with vociferous punctures, but instead of catapulting the listener from the somnolence of an evanescent respite, his feeble attempts at layering sounds are rarely any less vaporous than the silence. Stolid drones and inconsequential waves of static proliferate throughout the album, yet even during the rare moments when the textured sounds possess any substance, Corbelli has not shed his affinity for the puerile drones, bloops, or bleeps which tarnished _Cut My Throat_ (reviewed in _CoC_ #15). Unfortunately, incompetence alone can not satiate Corbelli; he also submits to the most nettlesome of industrial trends: the insertion of vocal samples. Over a decade after Lille Roger, of whom AM is a mere simulacra, augmented his moribund ambiance with samples, Corbelli attempts the same prosaic act, yet this creates one of the album's few highlights: the savage screams of "After Murder," the album's sole track to sufficiently invoke the self-effacing indignation and psychotic vim suggested by "slush of a maniac" (although the association of "slush" with "maniac" leaves my mind as bereft of any transgressive impetus as the music does).

(article published 1/1/1998)

ALBUMS
11/18/1996	A Lewandowski	6	Atrax Morgue - Cut My Throat