Review: Jugendwerkhof – Dienstmord (Low Life High Volume, Jun 25)

Dienstmord, Berlin duo Jugendwerkhof’s follow-up to their 2018 debut album Blutstätte, is the second installment in their (hopefully) ongoing series of crushing noise releases. There’s not a lot of information available regarding what exactly the artists use to create their music, but it’s all so loud and abrasive that deciphering the origins of each layer isn’t exactly crucial. Swirls of screeching feedback, crashing junk, vocals distorted beyond recognition, and god knows what else are the assaulting elements that make up the three tracks, each an unrelenting 11-minute industrial nightmare. The first part wraps its crushing tendrils around you like an ersatz animatronic anaconda, all overlapping waves of squall and racket crashing in one after the other. The second takes a bit more time to get going, starting things off with a minimal drone and largely unaffected metal clatter before escalating into a flood of cracking electronics that bleeds into the painful discord of part three. A simple summary doesn’t really do Dienstmord justice, though; like most great harsh noise records it’s all about the viscerality of the experience, and there’s no shortage of that here.