Other Voices Records has reissued one of the first works by English band Attrition, the terrifying This Death House in a 300 copies limited edition. 250 copies have been released in classic black vinyl and 50 in back and white splatter. It’s the second reference that the Russian label releases of Martin Bowes’s band, after The Truth In Dark Corners, a compilation of live material from the 1985 tour.
This Death House is split in two long improvised tracks recorded in Coventry in 1982. The first one of them, “Crawling” presents a really suffocating atmosphere full of disturbing and frightening sounds. B-side is more abstract, with 23 minutes of industrial experimentation. “Dead Of Night,” also the name of a 1945 movie, leaves the scares for the second part of the track, like a good horror film. The album has been influenced by classic horror cinema as Night of the Living Dead and The Last Man on Earth and it’s a clear precursor of the dark ambient genre.
Although we use the adjective “unclassifiable” quite often, it’s never as appropriated as when we are talking about Attrition. In their long and productive career, they have released material of almost every style: industrial, EBM, neoclassical, darkwave and dark ambient and created club anthems such as “Haydn (Or Mine)”. Being This Death House, one of the first references on the band (that published only one live album first), this is the perfect entrance to the rich and immeasurable universe of the band.
