THE DRONE DRUG (RTB#41) REVIEWS VITAL WEEKLY The two members of The Skull Defekts work as such since 2005, but both their musical history dates back to a lot of older Swedish bands, such as Kid Commando, Alvars Orkester, Union Carbide Productions, The Members of Tinnitus, Trapdoor Fucking Exit, Cortex, 8 Days Of Nothing and more - not that they are all familiar here. The two members, also both active as solo musicians, are Joachim Nordwall (a.k.a. The Idealist) and Henrik Rylander. They play drone music, or rather in their words 'The Skull Defekts is all about R H Y T H M, repetition and all energies in sound'. The Skull Defekts don't play nice, atmospheric drone music with that nice touch of ambiance to it. It's the pitch black opposite version they play, the nightmare take, the industrial, polluted kind of drone music. Deep, heavy bass like sound pressing against your ears - even without headphones - and high pitched, feedback like sound that cause that immediate headache. The rhythm cycles are very fast, so fast that they become a drone. This is not music to play 'soft' and let it gently fill your atmosphere, but this is music to be played loud, in a dark room and the volume should be set to level which doesn't allow any escape. No easy music, but top heavy drone music. The instruments? Clueless. Machines (of any kind, musical and non musical) I guess, fed through a line of sound effects and maybe analogue synthesizers. What do I care? It hardly music that one can think straight: that is the level of immersion here. Very nice stuff - even when that sounds like a conflicting term. (FdW) Aquarius Holy drone!! This is not at all what we expected from these guys, but then, most Skull Defekts records tend to confuse or confound. Which is pretty much why we love them so. And who are we to turn up our noses art a sonic surprise, especially when that surprise is DRONES. Big thick buzzy snarling crumbling blown out low end buzzing writhing brain melting, ear drum crushing, rib cage rattling, speaker destroying drones. Skull Defekts are no stranger to the drone, and the fact that they called this record Drone Drug, should have been a clue, but the band, who in the past have been heavily rhythmic, have discarded pretty much everything except for the drone. No beats, no riffs, no recognizable instruments, nothing but deep dark drones. This is a seriously heavy record. Dense and brutal, four extended tracks, each an exercise in tension, long form extended tones, but within these, stretched out sounds, much like dronelord Phill Niblock, the various layers are surprisingly active, throbbing and pulsing, and twisting and slithering and buzzing and whirring and shimmering, the sounds rough and raw, bits crumbling and emitting grit, slipping into fuzzy drift and then slipping back into a solid endless throb. The power of the drone is divine, and when harnessed, like this, with volume, and texture, and timbre, the music is a physical presence. Headphones come to life and encase your head in an organic black cocoon of sound, speakers unfurl thick flows of sonic tar, laying supine, eyes closed, you're soon buried alive, beneath layers and layers of resonant rumbling sound. And it is divine. This is powerful, earth shifting, massive minimal music. Not sure if these sounds come from synths or guitars, electronics or sine wave generators, malfunctioning effects pedals or a microphone lowered into the center of the Earth (we're leaning toward the latter), the result is something so primal and organic, so primeval and timeless, the act of listening seems to alter the listener's molecular structure, transporting the listener to an alternate universe, made entirely of sound, where our bodies are transformed into sound waves, our souls escape their mortal shackles and reveal themselves to be pure, deep drones. So awesome.TR>