One of the aspects of industrial muzack that some of the genre's edgier practitioners don't seem to grasp is that it doesn't need to be disturbing or confrontational or noisy all of the time. Sometimes the rusty, badly wired, e.coli-infested vending machine that is industrial music spits out a lil nugget of genuine beauty - for every Frankie Teardrop there's a Cheree; for every medical horror show Throbbing Gristle put the listener through they'd take their synths for a nice Walkabout.
Having said all that, there is absolutely no reason why a piece of industrial music shouldn't be the most sonically abrasive and thematically horrifying thing you've ever heard. This may have been the reasoning behind Isolrubin BK, a collab between Brian "Lustmord" Williams and Andrew "Nagamatzu" Lagowski that has recently had n0teeth humming, toe-tapping and suffering terrible nightmares about car accidents.
Reissued in 2009, Crash Injury Trauma was originally released in 1992 hot on the heels of the reissue of another Williams-Lagowski collaboration by the name Terror Against Terror. That project's sole offering, Psycholocical Warfare Technology Systems, offers the occasional tantalising glimpse - a siren here, a distorted kick there - of where the partnership would eventually lead, even if the results (originally recorded in the late 80s, and you can tell) are less of a deadly display of sonic might. It's more of a fun romp through the same militaristic electro-industrial tropes that Sarin would one day build an audiovisual identity around.
Crash Injury Trauma, however, is proper nasty.
Like The Normal stripped of any eroticism and reduced to the stark reality of human flesh being shredded by shattered glass and swallowed by crumpled metal, Isolrubin BK takes Daniel Miller's Ballardian car crash fascination to unprecedented new depths of sheer visceral horror. The facts are presented in all their cold, clinical glory through song titles culled straight from the most gruesome forensic science textbooks, immediately tipping off the more sensitive listener that this album might not be the one.
Of course, shocking imagery is worthless without a solid musical punch behind it, but that's certainly not an obstacle for the BK boys. This album is one of the most punishing listens I have ever subjected myself to in 15+ years of rifling through the industrial genre's drawers for my next sadomasochistic fix of visceral sonic brutality. An exploding blue Vauxhall Cavalier of rhythmic noise and power electronics that proves how, in the right hands, sheer brute force impact and adventurous experimentation don't have to be mutually exclusive aims.
Samples are put to horrifyingly effective use. On [deep breath] Extensive Fissured Skull Fractures Produced By The Head Striking The Border Of The Windshield excerpts of a tv report on joyriding, complete with bursts of police radio chatter, provide a grimly vivid narration. (As an aside, has there ever been a single recording in the history of electronic music that didn't benefit from having a siren in it? Andrew and Brian there, capturing the sound, if not quite the spirit, of '92/'93 UK rave.) Blood-curdling shrieks of metallic (and occasionally human) distress tear through the rest of the album like shards of bone through faux leather seat upholstery. The spoken Crash excerpt on Cranio-Facial Absorption: Multiple Lacerations almost comes as a relief. We've all read that book or seen the film, so we're back on familiar, fictional territory, rather than some cold, cruel tarmac surface in an all-too-real British city.
There's an incessantly rhythmic basis to some of these tracks that sounds like a rudimentary blueprint for industrial techno - in fact, no, scratch that, there is no "blueprint" or "rudimentary" about it, Crash Injury Trauma IS an industrial techno album, whether these two industrial stalwarts consciously intended it to be one or not. Bourbonese Qualk - another key figure on the South London scene in the 80s - would release their blistering acid onslaught Autonomia on Praxis Records the following year, establishing the industrial-to-techno pipeline with firmer and clearer intent.
That's not to suggest you'll be bopping to charming ditties like Motor Vehicle Collision Victim Removal Procedures or the especially gruelling 15-minute opener Resistance Of The Human Head To Crash Impact in the disco any time soon. Crash Injury Trauma is relentlessly nightmarish, genuinely disturbing and about as soothing as whiplash. But like all good car crashes, you just can't look away from it.