Pig Heart Transplant is the alter-ego of Jon Kortland, one half of surgical powerviolence duo Iron Lung. Like that group, Pig Heart Transplant delivers both a vicious beating and violent outcome. However, the operating methodology is an entirely different animal: slow, churning, industrial, electronic, painfully percussive, a bureaucratic nightmare of state power with gears grinding the individual into a hallow shell, perfectly molded into One of Them. This is 1984. For Mass Consumption is composed of 28 tracks, each approximately 44 seconds long, each song title a four-letter word, structured in a perfectly palatable way for optimum group adoption and mindless adherence to common purpose. Electronic manipulation, no wave guitar noise, abrasive hammering and eerie synthetic ambience imbue the listener with the seedy malaise of manipulation on a societal scale. One might recognize the pulverizing brutality of early Swans on tracks like “Film” or “Pigs,” the pulsing throb of Brighter Death Now and IRM on “Coma” or even Robert McNaugton’s soundtrack work for Henry: Portrait of Serial Killer on “1970”’ or “1980.” Without doubt a horrifying work of aural terror, For Mass Consumption is the logical result of a culture bent on banal conformity and the futile struggle against its domination. 20 Buck Spin is pleased to bring this tormented future vision into the present in collaboration with Iron Lung Records.
CD $9.50
09/02/2014
***Upon first listen to this I felt sick. Upon the second listening I felt dirty. And sicker. "Weapon" is an aural attack on sanity while "Gut Pleasures" is so far from pleasing that We have given up all hope of further existence. This record is the equivalent of swimming in fallout with open wounds. This record kills you. This record is inner turmoil industrialized. This record has replaced your feelings. This record is our future. This record is not for people. 500 copies. Black vinyl in a sleeve with some fucking letters on it.
7" $7.25
11/22/2011