Mlehst - Coldness FLAC

Experimental, yes, without a doubt, but there's a subtlety to MLEHST's music which is probably more closely related, albeit more stripped and minimal, to the less structured soundtracking of MAIN than more Noise and Terror sounds. Shy guitar, sounding as if it would be more at home on a VIDNA OBMANA recording than the white scraped repeated noise which occasionally gives this music 'rhythm'. Drifting soundscapes grow like mountains then fall away to fragile plains, terraforming a strange journey through bizarre lands. If MLEHST know one thing, it is that some of the most unsettling music contrasts wild noise against mellow, sleepy sounds. One thing's for sure - they create a bizarre sound of cacophonous feedback and dreamtime ripples which juxtapositions the settled and the unsettling in equal parts. Another comparison might be FINAL circa their second album.
But always in the background there lurks the spirit of THROBBING GRISTLE. It's hard to get away from their influence and here, with MLEHST's clever use of mild, subtle sound, it seems even more obvious. In fact, there are parts of this recording which could quite easily have been picked straight out of the TGCD and planted here to grow into an entire album.

For a cassette release this is top quality stuff. Okay, so it is minimal, stripped down to bare bones structure. But it pays your investment back a hundredfold. Wander through the killing fields of another person's Hell!

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.