The Ritual Inclusion of Code - Beta Wave Nemisis (2011) [Small Doses]

There's a special category of artist I'd never quite realized existed until I began thinking about this release. They don't have a name, a manifesto, or self-serving documentaries. They're the "intellectual metal kid's noise artists."

I could certainly include artists like Locrian in this, and they may be a good entry point. They're great. They do half-black metal now, but back in the day they were the building, fulfilling wave of sound that you could find blessing scattered metal shows around Chicago. They're into noise, they're into metal, and they're not quite metal, so the metal kids think they're a noise band. (Just to be clear, they're not.)

20.Sv and Deadwood are the side of this I've never quite understood. They bill themselves as harsh noise. 20.Sv in particular had a big publicity stunt in the metal scene (see where I'm going with this?) getting allegedly declared a terrorist act in Lebanon. But while I've run into metalheads enthusing over these noise artists again and again, both Daniel Jansson (Deadwood) and Osman Arabi (20.Sv) make a sort of muted, almost ambient expression of soft, round static. They're quiet and soothing, even if you play them "loud as hell."

Locrian's labelmates on small doses, The Ritual Inclusion of Code is apparently a collaboration between Deadwood and 20.Sv. Alone, they always just disappointed me. Together, they make me think "Oh, I could do this on a laptop. And I wouldn't be proud of it or try to release it." Beta Wave Nemisis (do they realize that's a spelling error?) sounds like my early, incompetent noise project made halfway into ambient with Audacity reverb and delay. There are actually childish clean guitar noodles partway through, an example of aesthetic self-undermining that even I never stooped to.

Big names don't mean real music.