Jodis

Black Curtain

BY Natalie Zina WalschotsPublished Oct 18, 2012

This release is a bittersweet one. Black Curtain is challenging and corrosive, a twisting, acid-spitting creation that makes listening something more akin to the act of snake handling. It's also the last full-length release Hydra Head will put out before it no longer issues new releases, confining activity to its extensive and varied back catalogue. Jodis embody a great deal of what made Hydra Head such an excellent label, one dedicated to putting out difficult music at its best. The band bring together a stunning conglomeration of talent, in James Plotkin (Khanate, OLD), Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer) and Tim Wyskida (Khanate, Blind Idiot God). Sparer than much of Turner's other work, Black Curtain deals in the currency of scarcity, laying gauzy, aching clean singing over cymbal crashes and urgent but subdued guitars that seem to emanate from very far away. There's inevitability to this record, a sense of deep and irretrievable loss that permeates every note and breath, soaking in inexorably through the expert use of repetition. "Awful Feast" is particularly fine, retaining more fight than some of the other tracks, combining the peace of a chant or mantra with sheer revulsion. This is a shivering, teeth-bared, cold and scaly album that seeps mourning.
(Hydra Head)

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