Published by Alessandro Violante on December 8, 2017
Approximately two years ago, the Serbian duo Boris Noiz and Darko Kolar called Ontal recorded their first full length Entropia after remix done for Fausten, a work released by Ad Noiseam. An album in which the grim and atmospheric elements were the background upon which wisely mixed together techno-oriented beats, rhythmic noise and vaguely power electronics components stood.
We’re now in 2017 and, in the meanwhile, Nicolas Chevreux‘ label has quit. The result was that music projects belonging to the so called “Ad Noiseam sound” started releasing music under other labels, embracing this way new sonic possibilities. Ontal found their personal way too, recording some more techno oriented EPs, a genre which has always been their most important music influence. Then they released their sophomore album Amass with German label HANDS (the readers shold know what we’re talking about). As the album title suggests, Amass “amasses” their sonic explorations starting from the release of their debut album until today, and the result is convincing.
Since its first sign, it’s clear how the duo have cut-off the aforementioned atmospheric components, focusing instead on hard and straight to the point techno beats. A rather different result when compared to the songwriting of songs such as Foray from their previous album, which had melodic and melanchonic elements here totally absent.
Amass is made of eleven rather immediate, fast, cold, distorted songs, as suggested by Nicola Bork’ cover artwork. It’s an album fully oriented towards, as well as dominated and pervaded by, the unstoppable, obsessive, alienating, asphyxiating, almost posthuman four-on-the-floor beat.
It also contains their fastest songs to date, such as the post-Orwellian 2416 with its very fast and annihilating rhythm and, above all, the ending song Pressure rise equation which is the most rhythmic noise oriented number (close to Mono No Aware style) of the album, wisely put at the end of an album aimed to the less “straight edge” alternative dancefloor.
Their new album is also a clear example of the direction where Udo Wiessmann‘s label is progressively and partially heading to, without ever losing its typical sound. Since the release of the most recent Geistform EPs, more than few artists have made so called techno industrial / dark techno-influenced albums; for example Supersimmetria or the Japanese producer Tomohiko Sagae ( although, let’s be clear, he doesn’t recognize his music as belonging to this definition) as well as New Frames, just to name a few.
This doesn’t mean less techno oriented songs are not to be found here, such as Improvidence with its noisy elements and rhythmic noise moments, or the aforementioned ending song. If the martial and fastened Pareidolia gives us metallurgic rhythmic noise-inspired beats, the following Pareidolia part 2 is its counterpart, an alienating dark ambient song that seems to have been recorded into an active factory. As far as the other songs are concerned, they’re focused on four-on-the-floor, martial, repetitive and blunt techno sounds.
With Amass, Ontal show a sound influenced by their recent EPs, a rather changed formula hitting the listener with something unexpected, Here they demonstrate a strong creativity and a grand courage, not repeating in a safe way the path of their debut album. Convincing and straight to the point: Industrial people should give it a try and (not only) dance to it, as this album is dedicated to them and to their music.
Label: HANDS
Rating: 9