The early ’90s were heaven for people like us. Postage was low, CDs became accessible in production, vinyl plants weren’t occupied by Adele or Taylor Swift, and people in the scene felt the urge to make statements. Statements of the kind where you were not afraid of possible consequences or retaliations connected to it. So music-wise, when it came to the underground or alternative scene, those were the days of Cold Meat Industry, Ant-Zen (both still active albeit in a different form) and Slaughter Productions. This last one was the brainchild of Italian-born Marco Corbelli, who we also knew as Atrax Morgue, A prolific, highly creative, sincere, beautiful and sadly also troubled artist who we lost – 37 years young – in 2007.
Slaughter Productions was his label, and he gave people a platform where others may be held back a bit. Not afraid to touch subjects like murder, necrophilia and alienation combined with styles like death-industrial, power electronics, harsh noise and dark ambient, the Slaughter roster gave birth to excellent releases, one of which EVERYBODY should have because of its meaning to the development of ‘our’ scene, being the “Death Odors”-sampler. I got that album in ’94, and it was how I heard of Megaptera, Shee Retina Stimulants, Atom Infant Incubator and (my personal favourite) Deaf Machine. So reading that Tribe Tapes was re-releasing three of the old Slaughter Tapes to CD, I was like… Damn, So good to see Marco’s spirit still living on and still having people paying respect and honour to the guy that did so much for us.
The first of the three is Die Sonne Satan “Fac-Totum”. Originally a 10-track C60 cassette packed in the all too common A5 envelope, now a 13-track CD with an additional 15 minutes worth of compilation tracks from the same era. Die Sonne Satans is a dark ambient project by fellow Italian Paolo Beltrame, who was also in Atom Infant Incubator with Runes Order’s Claudio Dondo. The music on this release might sound a bit dated at some moments, but that’s not bad. I mean, C’mon, it’s 30 years old! Music has the right to age; in this case, the ageing is done gracefully because this whole album still stands rock-solid.
The flow on the album from ‘Razor’ till ‘Cosmic Mantra’ – the original album, so to say – is flawless. One track where maybe the rhythm is a bit too much (“Hic Cum Apostuli Sui”), but that’s ok. Because for the rest I don’t have any complaints. If I had to compare it with others, it would be a kind of Raison d’Etre meets Morthound. So yeah, definitely heavy CMI influences here too. The final three additional tracks fit the album perfectly. A combination of sound generation and composition, as we heard on this album before, so the complete conceptual approach stays perfectly intact. But I sadly can’t tell you my favourite track because the whole journey makes it worthwhile.
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