Barstool Mountain - Birth Canal cs (New Forces, 2022)

[Joie de la Blumpy]

Barstool Mountain – Birth Canal (New Forces)

Blessed with an opportunity to preview the singular III, the first thing to transpire was the necessary: whip out all the other ‘Stool on hand. Ain’t much. Only the two tapes, I & II. So a need then to pad it out with a good dose of recent AoF, the heavy shit. The WCN 3lp for starters. Fecal matter of exceedingly weighty persuasion. Then on to ‘ol discogs, cause it’s easier to suss them boring liner note minutiae on screen then to fiddle around with special packaging stowed in assorted nooks and crannies. And then… what in the bleeping fuck? There was a new one? On New Fucking Forces? You dirty fucking bastards. How could you, how could I, where’s my fucking brain, how did I, fucking?

So, okay, calm down blumphole. Copies still available. Plenty Stool to go around. Think I’ll just put in an order, right, and. Hold on a sec. Just you hold on. Just let’s have a looksee over here, right. Right in here. And, yes, of course, stuck between the Ochu and the Zalhietzli, Birth Canal.

The amazing thing is, given the current state of the few remaining brain cells, this doesn’t happen more often. (Full disclosure: it does. All the fucking time.)

So, am I going to, like, actually say anything about this wonderful little beaut? Yes I am, of that you can be absolutely positively sure.

[Joie de la Blumpy]

Wait. Who you calling little? Well how about anything clocking in at twenty-one minutes and fifty-two seconds- little enough for ya? The size of course belies the true heft of this true blessing to sound kind. I was almost ready, accepting that BC would precede III by a good half year…I was almost ready to go out on a limb and declare the ‘holes as reporting receipt of their heftiest, heaviest, motherlodingest, serving of Stool yet.

Down to the crunch, the twenty-one minute fifty-two second crunch, and all them nice little thematic interludes are dispensed with; no shit-faced singalongs, no midnight confessionals, no hydroxizinal drone-frieze. Thus to free the focus on, well, the crunch. Thick, deeply-textured murk-be-sputtered crunch, settling on the palate with nice chunky notes of primitivo a la earlier Zone Nord and Dead Body Love, to pull a couple references out the ass, served raw and unvarnished, settling in for solid state bludgeoning-to-death under the full frontal force of brute, strangulated, crrrrrrrrrrrrrunch.

But not just crunch. With Stool, as with all things AoF adjacent, you are in fact assured quite the variegated package of, more and less smooshed-to-shizzle, goodies. First and most apparent are the by-now-signature assemblages of arid acoustic metal thunking wood thunking metal, real physical-like, real slooow-like. A whole lotta thunk, gripped with a firm and unflinching determination to inflict a maximum of hurt, rusted-through patches of muffled rust and shriek ultimately destined for unceremonious dunking into congealed pools of acerbic bilge-waste, to be fished out, in ragged heaps, as though badly bedraggled lengths of tape, stretched to their limits and fraying, were feeding through dank watery cave-holes, musty clenching sphinct-chambers laboring to wring the barest wheezing gasps of choked air from the sorry, sputtering, lot. No one said it was going to be easy.

[Joie de la Blumpy]

settling on the palate with nice chunky notes of primitivo a la earlier Zone Nord and Dead Body Love, to pull a couple references out the ass

But let’s just cover that ass for the moment, to affirm that with said notes not for the moment to be implying particularly, or peculiarly, shared airs. Per se. I mean, they are there. In the primitivo, for starters, there might be sussed a wide and abundant species of crunch to which one might ascribe certain snuff-bodied strangulations, certain nordic zones of textured asphyxia.

But the thing is, the thing is. Feel the plain and unfettered acoustic sources playing against said strangulation, said asphyxia. Bear with me for a moment. Cause, I know, you may well have heard something of that, in the more muscular strains of Hum Of The Druid. The Abisko self-titled. The comp appearances on Sam McKinlay’s Militant Walls (#07) and Lake Shark Harsh Noise (#01). The latter representing the centerpiece of an under-remarked vision entitled Texture.

HOtD could on some surface level be declared AoF-adjacent, but not really. Not really, says me. The Druid’s style is far more cinematic, an invitation to examine necrosis from a range of perspectives, both here, there, and every which where. But Stool, see. Stool don’t do that. Stool, and let’s just earmark this with an acknowledgement that I am talking, wholly and completely, out of my ass, is more about the essence (at least, to these much fucked ‘holes). About the brute. About the essential unvarnished unfettered brutality of the raw sound, in glorious unglorified raw.

Elsewhere I declare, “substance over style”, but not just as a rallying cry. I mean it. AoF, and its adjacencies, is a challenge, to force the attention back, and back. And back again. Back to the roots. To the core. To the raw and unflinching moment. Where life begins.