Band:	Surachai
Album:	Heavy Mask
Style:	Ambient, Noise, Industrial metal
Release date:	July 07, 2015
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Weeds Through A Shattered Skull I
02. Weeds Through A Shattered Skull II
03. Weeds Through A Shattered Skull III
04. Weeds Through A Shattered Skull IV
05. Visions From A Misplaced Runes I
06. Visions From A Misplaced Runes II
07. Visions From A Misplaced Runes III
08. Visions From A Misplaced Runes IV
09. Curses Sung In A Half Whisper I
10. Curses Sung In A Half Whisper II
11. Curses Sung In A Half Whisper III
12. Curses Sung In A Half Whisper IV
13. The Weight Of Our Last Breath I
14. The Weight Of Our Last Breath II
15. The Weight Of Our Last Breath III
16. The Weight Of Our Last Breath IV

I'm extremely amused to see that Surachai offers a vinyl version of Heavy Mask for sale on his [url= http://surachai.bandcamp.com/]Bandcamp[/url]. If your record player ever produces sounds like these, it means that something is seriously wrong and you ought to evacuate your house, because it's about to explode. Your dumb kid spilled orange juice down it, the CIA affixed a bomb to it, or maybe you actually bought this album. Either way, run.

None of these songs? is a song. These are holding patterns, loading screens, transient whispers, and hobo graffiti. These are the sounds of an unpleasant fungal infection. Heavy Mask perfectly captures the sound of standing in a queue waiting to buy a better album. I know that when I review terrible albums I often spend more time throwing out [what I think are] clever analogies to explain how horrendous they are than I do actually describing the music, which perhaps is an unprofessional strategy, but at least in this case the "music" is so one-dimensional and repetitive that I'm obliged to find creative ways to pad out the review. Literally every track on Heavy Mask consists of electronic burps and squelches over a drum track. One or two sound-units even forget to bring the drum track.

All right, so this is clearly some kind of ambient/noise project. Fine. Give me credit; I can roll with that. Noise and experimental forms of music are not unknown to me. That would be fine, except there is barely any noise in this noise. All I hear is a test drum pattern and a single, thoroughly-unrelated line of electronic tones muddling through a formless void for a minute-and-a-half until the whole thing collapses under its own nonexistent weight. Maybe, given time, one or two of these creatures could develop into something appreciable for its aesthetic and atmospheric values, if not (ever) for its thoughtfulness or true musical nature, but they all vanish within a matter of seconds. 18 tracks, nearly all under two minutes, and none of them going anywhere even remotely different from the previous one - what the hell is the point?

I also found this album while looking for grindcore, so you can imagine my disappointment when instead of hideous shouting over fractured punk riffs I got this random assortment of broken amplifier sounds that makes me wonder if I should try turning the album off and on again to fix it. I don't know what to make of Heavy Mask, only that I should make a hasty retreat from it. It isn't grindcore, it certainly isn't metal, and it barely constitutes music.