In The Hands Of The Randomizer – Ambivalent Records

Strewth. A new Deviant Species album is pretty major news, and rightly so I reckon. Deviant Species is now only one person (Santos de Castro), as Paul Wright now concentrates on his NRS and RAM projects, and with nine brand new tracks including two collaborations with Scorb, things are looking tasty before we even start off. Voice of Thard is a fairly muted start to the album, its atmosphere of foreboding works well in opening up your speakers for what’s coming next. Pincushion Man is the Deviants we love – perfect balance of sounds, shifting backgrounds, and a vibe perfectly-suited to wintery outdoor stomping. Shellless is wonderful, among DS’s best stuff, and showcases what they do best – scaring the seven shades of shiva out of you, chasing you with a vat of foul mushroom brew, laughing like a cockney hyena as it goes. Thermal Boundaries takes the vibe to an indoor squat, with an echoey acid stab coming up with a bit of goa crossover, before The Retinal Circus shifts the emphasis back into paranoia-inducing ubertrance, in a tune that seriously sets you on edge just to listen to it. The album’s title track, the first Scorb collaboration, is deep as ya like: the layering here is divine, with sounds literally rising up and out of the cauldron at you… incredible. A Night To Dismember is pure deviant thunk with hypnotic grooves over the top, really classy here folks and a real demo-display of this style of music at its best. Portal To Balojax is an ambient three-minutes leading up to the album’s final track, and second collaboration with Scorb, The Entrapment of John Dory. I had hoped this would be an utter testicles-in-a-blender mindmelter, but shockingly enough the tempo’s dropped to 140, the emphasis has switched onto melody, and the finished product is more akin to a rougher Silicon Sound. As such it’s alright, but let’s face it – it’s the nightmare trance we love Deviant Species for, it’s the nightmare trance they do best, and it’s the nightmare trance we’ll keep coming back to.