★★★☆☆
From Deutschland to Detroit: the most stubborn of straight-line techno doing kick drum kinetics and mapping out the blackest of bleakness. Sectioned off by a combination of industrial padlocks and do-not-cross police tape, once the lights are shut off and the generators flicked on, it’s a bruising ordeal for the fittest and their survival instincts. Synth pulses and heartbeats jump off speaker cones and out of chests, whip cracks sound far away yet have an infinite length of lash, and the pullback of a distressed violin on “Shatter” is the sort of micro-instrumentalism that Suckut uses as piercing weaponry. Even the more reflective “Places” is trying to look at its reflection from behind broken sunglasses in murky trails.
Respite on “Doomed” sounds oddly, overtly triumphant, like the emperor stretching in the morning sun with the task of picking new clothes laid before him. But the grindstone and coalface waits for no man, and it’s quickly back into slippery blips and bleeps over darkened blows and hi-hats shaking into cane-flexing infinity…or just darkened, skin-scraping drums wearing steel toecaps (“Vibrant”), where cruel ritual is the king’s keeper. It’s something when the warehouse ball bearings set to a plinking motion on “Remains” are a lessening of the burden; but of course, ball bearings still hurt if you don’t manage to duck and cover, as Suckut tightens the straps on his techno straitjacket as Detroit’s next avenger.
File under: Subjected, Violetshaped, Oscar Mulero