ORDRE

Sandwiched between their albums "Finsternis" and "Occult Rock," the French experimental rock act ALUK TODOLO released a few nonconventional items. Firstly they were included on the split album "On The Powers Of The Sphinx" with Nihil Nocturne, Nightbringer and Saturnialia Temple. Then there was the collaborative effort with Der Blutharsch and the Infinite Church of the Leading Hand. And then there was this tiny two track EP titled ORDRE which was essentially some unreleased material from the "Descension" era and was excavated from the caverns of creativity to be resurrected onto they vinyl 10." The two tracks are simple called "Side A" and "Side B."

"Side A" sounds very much like the "Descension" album where their mesmerizing and transcendental opiate grooves combined with spooky atmospheres create nightmarish visions of cold ethereal visions of lost worlds. This track is characterized by a repetitive marching of the cymbal heavy drumbeat that works in tandem with the bass line as the guitar performs horrific distorted and mangled dissonant antics around them. As it continues the percussion becomes somewhat sloppier and erratic as some kind of buzzing sound swarms in and out while swirling ambience effervescently haunts the soundscape. Towards the end the percussion picks up speed and becomes quite solid as the no wave ostinati pummel the senses.

"Side B" continues imperceptibly with the chaos continuing in full force and continues to ratchet up the nightmarish tension with the instruments falling increasingly out of sync with one another generating true occult mystic psychological assaults as the pummeling percussive drive seems to be at war with the atmospheric swarms of sounds. ALUK TODOLO really blur the genre lines here as it sounds like a form of black metal no wave with Krautrock type psychedelia. While the earliest albums weren't very metal oriented yet, this release is actually the first one that has enough drive and distortion of the guitars to be classified as part of the metal universe.

Despite being some leftovers they seem to have gotten the royal treatment and elements of blackgaze were unleashed to steer ALUK TODOLO towards the more metal oriented "Occult Rock" sound. While they've always been on the verge of being somewhat metal, the intensity fell just short enough to actually feel like they would fit in. On ORDRE that thin grey line was crossed and there is lots of energetic noisy distortionfests at hand although the song structures are nonexisistant and simply relies on free form meandering down a torturous sonic path into oblivion. Pretty cool stuff if you like dark ambient distorted no wave with Krautrock and traces of black metal chaos.