Legion Of Andromeda

Diabolical in its minimalist approach, the new album from Tokyo-based duo Legion of Andromeda wormed its way deep into the brains behind Crucial Blast, unleashing a grinding nightmare of violent, industrial doomdeath. First released on vinyl by Unholy Anarchy (North America) and At War With False Noise (Europe), Iron Scorn is now reissued on CD to further the blast radius of this immense debut album.  
Iron Scorn has a strange effect upon certain listeners; as “Transuranic Ejaculation” bellows across the first moments of the album, the band’s primitive, bone-crushing riffage and minimal, mechanical tempo seem overly simplistic, even monotonous. Each song centers around little more than a pair of interchanging riffs circling endlessly over a mid-paced drumbeat that rarely deviates from a simple combination of metronomic crash cymbal and rumbling double bass. Keep listening, though, and Legion of Andromeda’s seemingly atavistic heaviness reveals a perversely hypnotic quality, the brutal repetition and savage, cyclical flow of these seven tracks turning into surprisingly infectious blasts of ravenous, concussive doomdeath. And it’s topped off with repulsively bestial vocals that frequently devolve into psychotic gibberish or rabid, snarling vocalizations, all of which lend an unhinged vibe to this rigid, skull-flattened dronedeath assault.  
Legion of Andromeda have hacked out a uniquely vicious sound, and share as much disgusting DNA with the grinding industrial metal of bands like Dead World, Skin Chamber and Streetcleaner-era Godflesh as they do with the putrescent doomdeath of Autopsy, Cianide and Asphyx, brilliantly fusing the devastating downtuned chug of the latter to the repetitive, belt-driven clangor of the former, each monstrous track churning through the black cosmos like a mechanical warbeast comprised of gnashing teeth and interlocking gears, terrifying and trance-inducing, with equal nods to the heaviest strains of industrial metal and the most primitive depths of black / death violence.