Recording of the Week, FIRE! - Testament

Judging from the exemplarily dour press shot above, you may think these three men have just born witness to an end-of-the-world prediliction, or some other apocalyptic event of that ilk. Rather than reacting with fear, as I assume most of us would, there's a certain look of menace about them, as if they might have had something to do with the havoc. It's at the end of the cult-movie Heathers (1988) where a scorched Veronica (played by Winona Ryder) returns to school following the aftermath of an explosion and is told she 'looks like hell'. Her ironically ashy response? "I just got back." This omniscent but ominous remark certainly came to mind as I first sat down to listen to Testament. 

For many years now, FIRE! - comprising Mats Gustafsson on sax, Johan Berthling on bass and Andreas Werlin on drums - have drawn from a wide-ranging palette that encompasses everything from free jazz to psychedelic rock and noise. Largely the brainchild of Gustafsson, the project slowly developed into the rambunctious FIRE! Orchestra, whose most recent album Echoes (2023) was released to great acclaim. But, like most free jazz and the screaming skronks of its spearhead, it's not for everyone. The salacious American cartoonist R. Crumb once wrote of the Colin Stetson-collaborator's vocation for 'torturing the saxophone', going as far as to ascribe those very words on one of the musician's typically sable album covers in silver ink. I'm sure this would only serve to egg these players on, encouraging them to ruffle feathers in amongst the velveteen niceties of any conventional jazz plumage.  

With their usual bombastic sense of unrestrained energy, this time round they've chosen to strip away the comforts and commodities that once adorned their previous work; as states the album's liner notes, ' ...no flutes, no electronics, no guests and no extras'. The result is something to behold. By reducing their regular assemblage down to just three core players, the group's primal magnitude has increased tenfold. Their sound is caustic, loud and uncompromising. It doesn't just hit, it scars, with Berthling and Werling concocting a concrete playground for Gustafsson to scuff his exposed knees on as he continues to explore. This album's open-ended grooves are nothing new to the FIRE! formula, but the rising level of suspense the rhythm duo steadily augment beneath their leader leaves the listener grappling with a musical conclusion of truly disturbing proportions. You know you shouldn't call for help; even if you did, no one would hear you. 

Piercing in its relentless repetition, the album carries a persistant monotony that does nothing but build, build, build in the flames of its own burning intensity. This abrasive and mean recording was put together in a blinding three-day stint under the jurisdiction of producer Steve Albini - a champion for all things alternative and forecaster for most of the changing fronts in rock music over the past thirty years. It makes sense that Testament trundles along with the sobreing heaviness of nineties acts including Nirvana and the Pixies, occasionally going as far as to maintain a cutting-edge radicalism of newer bands like Black Midi (all of which were produced by at one point by Albini). Just because this music has the potential to scare us, however, that doesn't necessarily mean that we should be afraid of it. Stand up to our demons, and they might just embrace us back.