What do you get, when two of Down Under‘s most interesting bands/projects team up together for a split record? Well, you sure do not get a second installment of the (admittedly great, but heard too effin often) “Where the Wild Roses Grow“ - for two reasons: First – there is no need for a sequel, as she is already dead. Second – UBOA and Whitehorse are not really pop-artists! But their split is awesome – in a very different way!
The Destruction of Eternity proves one thing: that even though two artists may contribute individual songs and it still sounds like one flowing collaboration, even though every track has one creator. Take UBOA‘s “Wasted Potential“ for example: The track could have been written by both partners because the question where the noise-walls come from, what its basis is, is quite hard to discern at first glance: It could be Whitehorse’s guitars or Xandra Metcalfe’s noise-productions. When listening to the track’s towering and collapsing walls one then notices that it must be an UBOA-track. Well, the length of the track might also be an indicator because the two tracks on the Whitehorse-side of the record combine for 23 minutes; UBOA’s tracks also come in with a similar running time, but it’s five tracks on her side.
Back to the flow of the record and here we might start at the beginning: Whitehorse open the record with the sixteen-minute-monster ”Wringing Life (Limiter Version” that sounds like a planet made entirely out of steel is slowly eroding and once it starts to move its limbs start to rub against each other slowly rasping each other to death and of course, themselves simultaneously; if you need a picture – think Marvel’s Galactus. It sounds as if gigantic plains of corroded sheet metal are moving, clashing, trying to out maneuver the over and finally ending up in a huge heap of rust and dust. The riffs are Mariana Trench deep and the pace of the track is like the ultra-slow-motion of two dinosaur bones slowly rotting away in the sun. Both tracks are taken from a session from 2017 and have been mixed by Xavier Irvine and mastered by James Plotkin.
UBOA’s five tracks were also mastered by the genius himself and you also get Whitehorse vocalist Pete Hyde doing additional vocals on four of the five tracks. The tracks are very powerful and can be associated with the Power Electronics idea, even though one will also find a classic guitar in all of these moments of sheer sonic madness. We get moments of harsh beauty and ideas of demoniacal calm, sometimes it feels as if the walls are collapsing all around us and then again as if we are lost at sea to find our own way. Especially the duo of ”Dreamwalker, Fuck I Miss You” and ”Pareidolia Shadow” are good examples – the first one is a subdued noise-based piano “ballad” and the second one an example on how to achieve the most with a simple slowly ascending beat and a lot of background distortion. Since we have already heard some pretty dark, heavy material before these two tracks, one tends to orientate oneself along these walls and when two such tracks come along, it becomes pretty difficult to find the way without. Xandra’s final track also has a very wide beginning but when the glitchy TripHop part sets in, with all the subliminal Industrial glam then we have something to hold onto. One can get the feeling as if we are witnessing her in the same state of confusion we are in, and that we are both guiding the other. A wonderful thought in and of itself, right? The slow guitar picking at the very end of ”The Apocalypse of True Love” paired with Xandra’s voice is the perfect ending for this record.
The Dissolution of Eternity is a split record that feels like a collaborative effort, because the songs flow from heaviest riff-dominated primeval Blackened Sludge to Industrial-clad Glitch-Hop is done in a miraculously effortless way by two projects that are a match made in darkness. Perfect.
