Review: Limbs Bin – One Happy World (Torn Light, Jun 5)

The new LP from Limbs Bin, a.k.a. Josh Landes of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, hurls out 49 chunks of blown-out, electronic noisecore in less than fifteen minutes. Crafting brutal blasts with only his voice, a maxed-out drum machine, and waves upon waves of piercing noise, Landes’ formula is simple but entirely original – and infectious. Each minuscule track is more ferocious than the last, oftentimes consisting only of a strident wash of feedback and the track’s title screamed over a distorted blast beat. Some of the longer stretches of these short pieces seemed very repetitive at first, but the advice I’d give is that gapless playback is key here; instead of a bunch of songs that sound the same, it becomes more of a continuous, pounding, visceral assault on the eardrums. The longer tracks such as “King of the World” are a refreshing break from the madness but are no less crushing; on these, Landes adopts a style resembling power electronics, his throaty shouts and the backing noise building tension until the dam breaks and the blasts return. I hope it doesn’t take much convincing for you to decide that One Happy World is worth your time, as it’s only thirteen minutes…but it also has much more to offer than many albums I’ve heard this year that are three times its length.