PARANOID TIME – Gruesome Mutilation CS

In their first release since 2017’s “All Knobs to the Far Right” “Gruesome Mutilation” presents a massive new album from Patrick Yankee’s Paranoid Time. What presents as trademark harsh noise in its dumb-as-shit, knuckle dragging glory eventually opens to a subtle, detail packed document of Paranoid Time’s vision.

This is the rare release that takes itself seriously enough to be good and comically enough to be great. The way to show your audience you aren’t messing around is never to say “we aren’t messing around.” The threat of the brutality is forcefully delivered by fearless gallows humor and conveyed without mercy. This is an artist unafraid to make mistakes, building expressively upon solid, self-made foundations. In the hour-long run time, the tracks are either too long to be a song, or too short to be a song, the process happening seemingly unaware of an audience. He has completed one of the hardest tricks in music, making complex things simple. One of the more satisfying, and challenging , things in the world of sound.

The listener is advised to sit with this album and adjust her EQ accordingly. Depending on settings you’ll find up to five different albums buried in the thudding, flickering monotony. It’s not a user friendly piece of music, or a piece of music at all. This is a document of matter-of-fact brutality and compelling proof of HONEST SERIOUSNESS. JC (3/25/19)