METHOD AND TRAP

Founded in 1998 as a solo project of James Huggett, the jagged musical soundscapes of COMBAT ASTRONOMY soon began with the industrial harsh noise debut "Psychedelic Failure" and then slowly but surely adopted musical elements of rhythm and industrial grit with "Lunik." Over the ensuing years, COMBAT ASTRONOMY has slowly sucked up the various musical genres of avant-garde jazz, math rock, brutal prog, no wave and zeuhl into its insatiable appetite driven focus on making bizarre industrialized noise-scapes and continues to unleash these wild experimental beasts onto the world in the current calendar year 2024.

METHOD AND TRAP is the band's latest and these days a well fortified band effort features an arsenal of instrumentation and a crushing brutal heft to its industrial-tinged bouts of bleakness. This latest effort follows in the footsteps of 2021's "Shamanic Insurgency" and continues the bizarre musical amalgamations of freaky dark jazz, avant-prog curveballs and industrial noise rock based detachment. This latest concoction features seven tracks of minimalist intensity in the vein of a wild and unthinkable orgy of sounds extracted from Guapo, Godflesh, tribal ambient acts and even doom metal. Noisy processions offer rhythmic marches through a series of noisy atmospheres and avant-garde extravaganzas.

Both heavy and repetitive and entirely instrumental, METHOD AND TRAP delivers the usual stab of a murky underworld where avant-garde darkened jazz somehow becomes one with avant-garde metal, industrial noise and bizarre tribal ambient percussion. A novel and exciting idea to say the least, COMBAT ASTRONOMY definitely found its own little niche that as far as i'm aware none have dared follow. Noise and confusion is the name of this game and it's almost impossible to tell what the hell is the point of all this! What we find is a beefy heavily distorted bass groove not too distant from early Swans, Godflesh or 80s no wave bands. Add to that industrial guitar noises that elicit an unsettling noisy backdrop will the keys and drones linger on in the background. COMBAT ASTRONOMY almost sounds like a Japanese noise rock band only Huggett grew up in England and now resides in the St Paul region of Minnesota.

This is a hypnotic style of industrial rock that verges on metal but doesn't quite get there. It calls it free jazz but the instruments are so muddled in filth and muck that it doesn't sound like jazz either. The minimalist approach allows the rhythmic marches to extend to infinity with only strange sounds from above breaking the monotony. Spoken samples and trippy keyboards add to the overall texture while creepy industrial sounds sort of ooze in and out of the jittery percussive drive without warning. Overall this is a very strange band and METHOD AND TRAP simply delivers another slice of this band's outside ethos that has kept it firmly rooted in the experimental underground for its entire existence.

This really is creepy music. The impending darkness that hits you from every angle. The unnerving percussive beats, the jangling guitar Fred Frith-ian freneticism and the eerie ambient accoutrements is the perfect recipe for soundtracks to a nightmare. Perhaps the closest i can think of to compare is the earliest of offerings of the German act Einstürzende Neubauten but just as i think the album surrenders to post-industrial ambient bleakness, another track will deliver a hefty dose of grungy guitar and bass workouts taking it to the world of noise rock. A nice varied mix of freakery which keeps COMBAT ASTRONOMY on the radar for all the noise freaks out there but as cool as this album is and the band's sound in general, is just shy of making it a completely essential musical experience. For those who love simplicity and a direct musical flow sort of style then you will probably devour this like roadkill. Enjoy.