The albumtitle is “Our life through your death” and the covers shows threatening guns at the front and the back. But that this is not just superficial flirting with nouvelle violence is clearified by this sentence in the booklet: “The Ruger Magnum .357 Magnum revolver pictured on this release is the pistol my younger brother used to commit suicide.” The mood is further enhanced by the statement that ‘absolutely no one’ is thanked or appreciated in relation to the creation of this release. LAW is Mitchell Altum, also co-founder of Triumvirate. Since 1993 Law has been involved in about ten releases, including albums on prominent industrial labels as Ant-Zen, Old Europa Cafe and Nuit et Brouillard. The material on “Our life through your death” was actually already recorded in 1996. After being ‘mishandled’ by three different labels, it now finally sees the light on Triumvirate.
After the introduction you will not be surprised that we are not dealing with tranquil ambient here, but rather with noisy power electronics. Though not all tracks are really hard, they do have a hostile mood and leave you with an uneasy feel. The songs are certainly not melodic, but rather dense and suffocating. Softer passages are merely silence before the storm. A track like Abrasion begins rather as a scary meditation, but gets very noisy as the song evolves, with some hammering percussion, creating a wall of sound. I really like the threatening atmosphere of ‘Your body is immobilized’, in combination with the machinegun-like rhythms. ‘Betrayal of the Flesh’ is somewhat deviating because of the prominent use of guitars. Also different is ‘it is beyond us now’, the final track, sort of a tranquil epilogue with piano sounds, with spoken word towards the end.
Certainly a recommended release, if you like experimental electronic music of a harsh and aggressive nature.
