Metallic Taste Of Blood brings together arch six- string experimentalist Eraldo Bernocchi with Porcupine Tree bassist Colin Edwin, percussive noise soldier Balazs Pandi and keyboardist and avant-jazz alumni Jamie Saft. In theory an intriguing collaboration, it’s even more mind-boggling in practice; a dark and maze-like scramble through ever-changing instrumental layers, with recognisable shades of Gang Of Four, PiL’s Metal Box, latter-day Crimson, and even Justin Broadrick’s Techno Animal lurking in these scabrous sonic shadows.
Yet the sum is something utterly distinctive and wonderfully unsettling. Edwin’s lurching bottom end and Pandi’s white hot beats provide the glue that brings everything together, most effectively on the deranged dub of Schizopolis and the paranoid, nihilistic urban throb of Fist Full Of Flies, but it’s Bernocchi and Saft’s armoury of conjured sounds and ambient curveballs that makes this such a consistently enthralling walk on the weird side.
On the evil robot riffing of King Cockroach, MTOB take things to a deeper level of menace, expanding from blissful space cadet dub and contracting to dense, distorted fug. Fascinating music from another dimension, but not one you’d necessarily want to be trapped in.
