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Given the relative austerity of this disc’s packaging, those unfamiliar with LHD’s work may likely be startled by the noise that bursts forth from the speakers from :01 onward. John Wiese and Phil Blankenship, who have made music together as LHD since 2003 continue their travel to harsh realms with Limbs of the Fawn, their fifth full-length release. As would be expected, it’s an opaque cloud of static, a conglomerate of millions of flecks of jagged-edged bits of audio detritus, threatening to shred esophagi and ear canals upon forced entry. Slivers of feedback peek through the stew, but Blankenship and Wiese tend to keep things so dense that individual voices are lost in the mix, leaving the listener to contemplate their foreboding mass of sound. Limbs of the Fawn, however heavy, isn’t stationary, though its movement is hard to gauge while in the middle of the tempest. But, just as the natural light changes subtly as twilight approaches, so does LHD’s sonic battering, though in a decidedly less picturesque way. The disc seems to replicate travel so fast it’s impossible, with even the tiniest of sounds rendered lethal by the speed in which it encounters the ear; like the proverbial penny tossed from the Empire State Building, innocuous bits turn into deadly weapons, swallowing the listener in a screaming fury. In the music’s deeper recesses, one can hear stubborn groans, emanations from what sound like aural bodies moving against the flow of the piece, their lumbering friction a worthwhile detail in the piece’s stormy existence. Like any sustained assault on the senses, it’s surprising how accustomed one’s ears can become to Limbs of the Fawn, and while high volume playback of the disc will certainly involve an biologically undeniable quotient of unhealthy listening, it’s interesting to allow the sound a chance to stake its claim to the listener’s ears, and to hear how, since the disc runs a rather predictable course, the jarring squall that opens the disc, while undergoing no major changes over the course of the album, can seem so easy to digest by its end. To some, such an effect might be a disappointment, though it often comes with the territory of proffering such aggressive sound for almost forty minutes, like the eyes in darkness, the ears find niches and footholds throughout the album, and as its ends, stuttered and choking, and silence regains control, one is made aware of just how enveloping Limbs of the Fawn had become.

LHD at Amazon & Insound