Water Damage

Austin’s Water Damage are a band that pushes the limits of the listener. The band’s been known for longform pieces that stitch drone to drum in a way that’s hypnotic and harrowing. The band reworks raga by way of razor wire, stripping the listener of any outside sensory input, shucking the soul like cosmic corn. With a base layer of drums stacked three deep, the album pounds and pummels, laying down a rhythm floor that’s somewhere between the shop floor and Faust’s So Far. Motorik doesn’t even cover it, Piwonka, Kanin and Harris are locked in and looking to inflict damage. Added to a double shot of bass and the serpentine sawed guitar of Travis Austin, the record becomes ritual, rite, and retribution all in one.

With four sides, four pieces, each around the twenty-minute mark, In E, cranks the turbine for twice the normal amount of tumult of their average album. The band doesn’t waste a minute of it, locking into three head-nod harbingers of doom and a capping the album with a cover of Shit & Shine’s “Ladybird” (off of their ‘05 Latitudes entry) that ropes in the band’s Craig Clouse for an extra dose of Damage. With so much drone gone to the ambient crowd these days, its nice to find a respite for those who’d like to enter stasis and still seethe. Sometimes you gotta say “screw serenity, I’m looking for something that cuts to the bone.”

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