Let me clarify, this is not a split. This is what happens when two nightmarish groups collaborate to make 5 songs together. The purpose? "To capture, digest and regurgitate Godflesh's 1989 Streetcleaner into a conceptualized nightmare...Every note lobotomised, remixed and overexposed, exorcising total aural madness." The end result is landscapes of industrial noises, subtle synths, samples, and doomy, sustained chords blended with blastbeats and psychotic screeches. It's a hallucinogenic walk through shadows, incorporating aspects of black metal to further violate the senses.
I definitely hear some similarities to Dendritic Arbor, but perhaps more so Malthusian. N.V. has the same ordered chaos, the mixed vocal registers, and even some parallel playing styles. Just add a slightly cleaner production and some electronic additions. The atmosphere ranges from doom to the raging speed of "Strangled with the Cord." This song has an inescapable ferocity. It's a beast snapping at your heels; the insane double bass heralding it's inhuman, quadruped pace.
Vile and contorting growls and screams seem to force their way from a distant murk, nearly suffocated in a dense, compressed space. They scratch and claw their way to your ears in a fit of self-preserving, primal violence. The darkness is so thick you can choke on it. And you will. This isn't music, this is something else.
Take "Visceral Repulsion" as an example. The echoing sounds of hammer strikes fill out an already impressive amount of kit work. Sticks travel from tom to tom like some pendulous workout, resting only moments before breaking into a blastbeat sprint through a torrent of what can only loosely be called guitarwork. More like living roots and vines sprouting, tripping, and entangling us in the mayhem.
N.V. is out today, and it is definitely impressive. I've never religiously followed either of these groups, but for me, the whole here is definitely larger than the sum of its parts. Stream below.