8 Hour Animal certainly wants to fuck up your Tuesday. “Wake,” the concluding track to the New York industrial/noise project’s second work Resigner, emerges after a hypnotic whitewash at the end of “Pushing Myself Down.” In the context of the album, the intro is manifested as a struggle to consciousness through distant, distorted cries and the gradual pumping of a heartbeat rhythm bathed deeply in reverb. A hypnotic, organic bass slithers its way into subconscious, steadily repeating its way through any mental fortifications with its venomous rhythm. Manipulated static clouds the upper register, the inhuman whisper of the vocals blending in with the haze around them. Bits of what sounds like anything from a warning siren to a set of bagpipes warp and take their own form into the hypnotic din. The mechanical propulsion of the drums increases, a buried howl emerges from the lower left, and (with a flash of laser synths) the song kicks into full gear.
As the repetition roots into the subconscious, the elements at play in the skies above take on new dynamics – this is where the action is happening, where the song unfolds against the sweat-fueled, driving heart of the rhythm. It’s a nightmarish journey, to be sure, but what’s really unsettling is how the lurking, serpentine beast consumes all the other sounds, digesting and distorting them to its own growth. The song concludes with the noise finally devouring the entirety of the music as though the serpent finally swallowed itself like some sort of audiouroboros. Not for the faint of heart.
Pre-orders for Resigner are available via the Sentient Ruin Laboratories website and Bandcamp page.
