Excerpt from Darren Bergstein Review

“… All told, this is another walk in the wild woods, a massive, marathon mess o’ sound that is at once overwhelming, cathartic, demanding, exhausting, and exhilarating. Facile descriptors for this music simply don’t apply here: such notions as ‘jazz’, ‘improv’, or ‘avantism’ are merely fading signposts that act only as off-the-cuff categorical pin-drops. This is true experimental music that along its hour-plus duration deconstructs everything you know about sound and reorients it in ways most of us could scarcely contemplate, much less actualize…”

Darren Bergstein, Downtown Music Gallery

Review by Darren Bergstein

METAL CHAOS ENSEMBLE – Inferno (Evil Clown 9283; USA) More spellbinding razzledazzle from the Evil Clown family of sonic provocateurs, this time courtesy of the multi-limbed Metal Chaos Ensemble. “Led” by EC label impresario Dave PEK hoisting up high his usual mind-melting array of instruments, on this go ‘round the Ensemble also comprises Bob Moores (space trumpet, flugelhorn, baritone electric guitar, efx, soft synths, etc.), Eric Woods (analog synthesis), Mike Gruen (signal processing, purple sparkles electric bass), and Steve Niemitz (Chaos kit, various drums, bells, and other percussive paraphernalia), in addition to recording engineer Joel Simches, who endeavors to prevent the whole enterprise from falling in to the abyss and provides additional real-time signal processing. All told, this is another walk in the wild woods, a massive, marathon mess o’ sound that is at once overwhelming, cathartic, demanding, exhausting, and exhilarating. Facile descriptors for this music simply don’t apply here: such notions as ‘jazz’, ‘improv’, or ‘avantism’ are merely fading signposts that act only as off-the-cuff categorical pin-drops. This is true experimental music that along its hour-plus duration deconstructs everything you know about sound and reorients it in ways most of us could scarcely contemplate, much less actualize. Between the gusty derecho of synthesis, the fusillade of clanging metals, the airbursts of brass and woodwinds, and everything in between, PEK and Co. essentially mandate we change our methods of listening, even when bludgeoning us about the head with their blustery blurts of sound. Occasionally PEK speaks in a biblical, Burroughsian tongue whose narrative threads a malevolence reflected in the diabolus in musica splattering before our ears, lending an arch, theatrical, sidelong weight to a music often lacking in such elements. Be careful ye who enter here indeed; powerful stuff, not for the faint-hearted.

Darren Bergstein, Downtown Music Gallery