originally written by Kyle Harcott
Taurus’ No/Thing , with its menacing, doom-slaked vibe, embodies the infamous quote, “If you’re going to do something, do it well. And leave something witchy.”
An auditory hallucination of mental hell wrought upon the unsuspecting, No/Thing untangles horrors unimagined, unveiling mind’s-eye sights never to be unseen; An aural weapon woven with frightful, psychedelic guitar spirals, doom-throbbed drums, and the utter madness of Stevie Floyd’s vehement roar. Scattered throughout the record, beneath an unglued grind of crawling-wrath doom, dense layers of suitably sinister samples lend the album an even greater weight of unease, a slow-slithering, dextromethic nightmare.
The album hatches forth from a sulfurous, black egg with “No Thing Longing… Human Impermanence”, unfurled by Floyd’s mind-shattering shriek, juxtaposed against a wavering vocal drone, reminiscent of Arabic throat music, entangled underneath. Unnerving in execution, the song is driven by off-kilter, not-quite-off-tune guitar passages, further adding to the listener’s dis-ease and sea-sickness. This is a common thread throughout No/Thing; Floyd’s guitar overdriven with deliberately-disorienting horrorshow tone, interspersed with stomach-churning screams, and subliminal-level vocal wails buried deep inside, and all the while Ashley Spungin’s drums pound out thulsa-doom, slaveship cadence with adamantine authority. All of it so fantastically discombobulating, it’s a soundtrack to being adrift at sea in the anguish and torture of your own mind.
“Set Forth On The Path Of The Infinite” is gargantuan – a cultish, wailing funeral march; an ominous requiem – it’s a terrified, bone-white finger wavering, pointing into the blackness at some shambling horror just outside the line of sight. “Increase Aloneness” reels like a satellite-temple of isolation, abandoned and hurtling ever farther away through frozen, atrament space, forever lost to anything resembling home. “Receed”, lumbering beneath funereal Hammond organ and off-kilter samples, vaguely reminisces Bernard Herrmann’s “Main Title” from the Taxi Driver soundtrack. Accompanied by the tortured, guttural susurrus of Wrest’s vocal, the final track is the icing on No/Thing’s Getting-The-Fear cake.
Like deciphering some arcane, cultic language, only to realize too late upon decoding it, you ought not have meddled with forces you don’t understand, Taurus’ No/Thing is a Pandora’s Box of psychotomimetic forbidden treasures, as enthralling as it is unsettling; Creepy-crawl siren songs for self-imposed self-immolation.
