Agonal Lust - 2018 - Modern Atrocities C35

Originally posted Oct 2, 2019 9:36AM

Private Release – none

Agonal Lust’s 2018 cassette sits in the ugly overlap between power electronics, death industrial, harsh noise and something closer to psychological abrasion. Modern Atrocities does not really behave like a collection of songs in the conventional sense. It works through pressure, repetition, distorted voice, low mechanical pulse, sheets of noise and sudden changes in density. The seven pieces are titled “Acts Of Repugnance,” “Repulsive Disposition,” “Displeasure And Maltreatment,” “Three Thirteen Twenty Three,” “Predator And Prey,” “Created To Destroy” and “A Lesson For Every Daughter.” The titles alone establish the record’s vocabulary before the sound even begins.

The cassette was originally released in the United States on August 2, 2018. Agonal Lust later folded this material into the much larger In Transit To Cold Perfection collection on Hospital Productions, where Modern Atrocities appears as one section of the project’s first era. Hospital describes Agonal Lust as built around inseparable sadistic and masochistic personalities, which fits the music’s constant oscillation between attack and endurance.

“Acts Of Repugnance” opens with a compact four-minute assault. The sound is thick rather than simply loud. Distortion occupies almost the entire field, and the vocal presence feels embedded inside the electronics instead of sitting cleanly above them. There is very little empty space. The track presses forward as one mass, with changes arriving through texture and intensity rather than through obvious verse-and-chorus structure.

“Repulsive Disposition” is shorter, under three minutes, and that brevity makes it feel even more concentrated. The track has the quality of machinery being forced past its intended limit. Noise folds into itself, frequencies grind together, and any recognizable human element feels partially swallowed by the electronics.

“Displeasure And Maltreatment” stretches the format again. The title is almost clinical, which is part of the unease. Agonal Lust frequently uses language that sounds detached, procedural or descriptive while the audio itself is emotionally extreme. That tension matters. The music does not simply scream its subject. It presents something closer to documentation corrupted by obsession.

“Three Thirteen Twenty Three” introduces another layer of abstraction simply through its title. Compared with the more explicitly violent names around it, the numerical phrase feels coded or diaristic. The sound retains the record’s basic architecture of distortion, low-frequency pressure and obscured voice, but the title gives the piece a different psychological temperature. It feels less explanatory and therefore more private.

“Predator And Prey” compresses the record’s dynamic into one of its shortest sections. The title establishes a relationship rather than an event, and the music mirrors that push-pull structure. Sound advances, recedes slightly, then closes back in. There is no real relief, only variation in how tightly the pressure is applied.

“Created To Destroy” has one of the most direct titles on the tape. The phrase could describe a person, an object, a social condition or the noise itself. Agonal Lust leaves that ambiguity intact. The track is not interested in resolving the phrase into a single narrative. Instead, the title becomes another abrasive surface attached to the sound.

“A Lesson For Every Daughter” closes the sequence at almost five minutes. It is the longest title and one of the longest pieces, and it has a different rhetorical weight from the others. Where “Repulsive Disposition” or “Created To Destroy” are blunt abstractions, “A Lesson For Every Daughter” sounds almost like an instruction, warning or corrupted moral statement. That makes it especially uncomfortable. The project repeatedly uses the language of domination, punishment, family, gender and violence without translating those ideas into a tidy position for the listener.

The Private Release cassette transforms this already loaded material through color.

The shell is solid pink.

Not translucent pink, not pale beige with a label on top, but an unapologetically pink cassette with matching pink hubs and a large pink paper label. Typed across it in black is “AGONAL LUST 2018 / Modern Atrocities.” The contrast is immediate. A record filled with repugnance, maltreatment, predation and destruction is housed inside an object whose color is commonly associated with softness, cosmetics, femininity, toys and sweetness.

That collision becomes even stronger when the artwork is opened.

The outer collage uses tattoo-flash imagery. A woman with large green eyes, dark hair, turquoise beads and a crescent-shaped necklace occupies most of the central panel. Beside her is a green cartoonish creature with huge round eyes, claws, teeth and a red tongue. It looks simultaneously monstrous and goofy. The images have the printed halftone texture of reproduced commercial artwork rather than original drawings made specifically for the cassette.

The woman’s image is cropped aggressively. Half of her face disappears at the edge. The creature is similarly isolated from whatever larger illustration originally surrounded it. Both have been removed from their source contexts and converted into fragments.

The PRIVATE RELEASE strip on the spine cuts through another fragment of the woman’s face.

Next to it is the familiar narrow band of black glitter.

The glitter has become a recurring physical punctuation mark across these Private Release objects. Here it creates a thin artificial sparkle between tattoo imagery and the plain white structure of the foldout. Again there is a mismatch between visual language and audio language. Glitter, turquoise beads, large eyes and decorative illustration sit against a recording built from hostile electronics.

The reverse panel shifts again into another visual system entirely.

Two women model bras in what appears to be a department-store or mail-order advertisement. Between them sits a large red-and-white sale sign reading “50% OFF Everything.”

That phrase accidentally becomes one of the strongest pieces of text in the entire package.

“50% OFF Everything” is supposed to be disposable retail language, a temporary instruction designed to move merchandise. Removed from its original advertisement and placed behind Modern Atrocities, it becomes strangely absolute.

Everything discounted.

Everything reduced.

Everything available.

Everything halfway gone.

The two models stare outward from the page while the discount sign occupies the center like a declaration.

This image also brings the cassette’s pink shell into a larger visual network. The pink no longer reads simply as a random cassette color. It begins connecting to cosmetics, lingerie, advertising, bodies, femininity, commercial presentation and the gendered language already embedded in titles such as “Predator And Prey” and “A Lesson For Every Daughter.”

That does not make the artwork an illustration of the music. It creates friction with it.

The tattoo woman is decorative.

The monster is cartoonish.

The lingerie advertisement is commercial.

The cassette is pink.

The sound is punitive.

Private Release places all of those systems next to one another and leaves them unresolved.

There is also something important about the cheapness of the materials. The advertisements, printed tattoo imagery, paper, glitter strip and typewritten cassette label are all ordinary objects. None has been transformed through expensive fabrication. Their meaning comes from selection and proximity.

The cassette itself becomes another found object in the assembly.

A pink plastic shell designed to carry magnetic tape now carries Agonal Lust.

The artwork does not attempt to reproduce the official release. It gives this particular copy its own body.

That physical body is almost absurdly cheerful from a distance. A bright pink cassette could contain children’s songs, bubblegum pop or an aerobics tape. Only when the label is read does “Modern Atrocities” appear.

That delay is useful.

The object smiles first.

Then it tells you what is inside.

— ChatGPT