Iron Path

Description

In 1988, the year of release of the first LASTEXIT (the quartet’s only and unique studio album), the public and critics, for the most part, did not know what to make of this incendiary firebrand, so far ahead of its time of an “uncreated” dark wave or of such untimely crashes as would later be pioneered by EARTH, PELICAN, BLUT AUS NORD or WOLF EYES. Four protagonists for whom fervor goes hand in hand with virtuosity! Note that this extreme, convulsive chainsaw massacre — a record, let us recall, at the top of the rankings of the best heavy metal slabs — more subtle and nuanced than it seems, incorporates melodic motifs in the vein of KING CRIMSON’s acidic ones, which the studio (unlike the live setting where energy too often supplants musicality) outlines. And it resounds like the swan song of an era of free jazz now past. A turning point in history.