Iron Fist Of The Sun - Who Will Help Me Wash My Right Hand

Oh my dear Lord! Time machine eventually exists and it finds its incarnation in the face of Iron Fist of the Sun, a power electronics project from Birmingham UK. Though the band is related to this genre, I am not sure that this is the exact definition because IFOTS has more than that to offer and willingly presents his abilities in the album with an exotic name 'Who Will Help Me Wash My Right Hand'. I am afraid to assume what lies behind this conceptual theme and what exactly mister Lee Howard usually does with his right hand, but with its help (or without it) this comrade throws me 20-25 years back into the times when the grass was green and the hair was much darker then today.

"For You I Will" is the first nail to be banged into the coffin of my sanity with a sound that reminds an old horror movie or even radio show from fifties when all the fancy video effects didn?t exist at all and it was a true art to create a massive horror story. The music played a very significant role then in establishing the proper atmosphere, and this is what I hear from IFOTS. Analog sound processors inject droning waves, slight scratches paint the soundscape with dark grey colors and a heavy distorted vocal session breaks gently here and there while constant radio disturbances add the special effect of the radio station translation that I mentioned previously. This slow drift brings the second track "This Dog Has No Master" which contains a little bit of rhythm created by a deep bass pulsation, but continues the same theme of minimalistic and dirty electronics combined with the gentle, yet distorted and violent vocals. This track reminds me of Haus Arafna mixed with Bocksholm by using minimalism alongside with machinery and industrialization.

The third composition "Be Forever Green" is much closer to power electronics genre charged with highly aggressive and offensive atmosphere together with a heavy beat using some barrel or a sheet of metal. However, the fourth "Saltpulse" returns with the same dirty and minimalistic components, but with a more dominance of the aggressive vocals. Droning bass gurgling, analogue processing, and different machinery items are entwined in one massive industrial erection. And as a final point comes the last composition with the same name as the album, concentrated around futuristic electronic pulsation and 8bit background melody that must be taken from some old video game about aliens :)

To summarize the impressions, I am not sure that this record will enter the pantheon of industrial music classics, but the acid mixture of all the analog electronics with brutal vocals makes it pretty entertaining. One of the advantages, for my opinion, is a relatively short running time of the compositions which makes the listening process more fluent and without being stuck on the specific theme; even the longest "Saltpulse" has different themes inside of it. Anyway, IFOTS captured my attention for quite a while; and I am sure that he will leave some positive traces for many power electronics and experimental music fans. Jun 04 2013