As incongruous as the concept of an “influential harsh noise record” might sound, Kevin Drumm’s 2002 album Sheer Hellish Miasma is the most influential harsh noise record of the 21st century. When scumfuckers like Wolf Eyes and Hair Police were painting America’s bloody noise underground with the rotted hues of VHS horror in the early ’00s, Chicago’s Drumm, a fellow traveler and seasoned sound artist, emerged with something sleeker and sharper. Instead of lurking behind the scene’s juvenile-hall notebook scribbles and spray-painted CD-Rs, Sheer Hellish Miasma came packaged in the clinical house design of Austrian electronic label Mego. The music wasn’t “damaged” or “limping” or “wounded” like the best American noise at the time, but was instead assured and even clinical, like the work of European laptop futzers Pita, Fennesz, or Russell Haswell. Sheer Hellish Miasma was ostensibly a guitar record inspired by Nordic black metal, but you would be forgiven for thinking the otherworldly tumult was made by mouse clicks and mania alone; its longform squalls resemble blizzards, static, roiling fires, sputtering hard drives, or a corpse-painted band in a sound clash with a wood chipper.
As a noise record that simultaneously channeled ambient, drone, and extreme metal, Sheer Hellish Miasma had unlikely reach. The Wire dubbed it a noise-music classic in a 2004 primer, and then—six months later—claimed its centrality to something they called “Subterranean Metal,” breaking containment in the middle of Sunn O))) mania. Artists from the fringes of dark ambient techno—Helm, the Haxan Cloak, Samuel Kerridge—would throw Drumm into their DJ mixes. Iranian composer Siavash Amini called the 2002 record “the noise album that convinced me noise could be compositional, as well as visceral, and sometimes improvisational.” Reissued in 2007 and again in 2010, Sheer Hellish Miasma just kept on glorping its way across the underground like Larry Cohen’s The Stuff. But Drumm busied himself with quieter and more desolate works: 2008’s cavernous voidsuite Imperial Distortion, 2009’s gorgeous odyssey Imperial Horizon, 2014’s confrontationally quiet Trouble, and the mountains of deliberately paced sound art posted to his Bandcamp page.
Though Drumm never completely shied away from noise, it was Erstwhile Records founder Jon Abbey who convinced him to venture back into the frostbitten tundras of his most famous nightmare. The imposing sequel Sheer Hellish Miasma II—95 minutes long, spread across two discs—certainly feels like the Drumm of a particular vintage: CD-only, blocky black-and-gold artwork, Nmperign’s Greg “Dana Flugel” Kelley returning for guest trumpet (good luck locating exactly where). But Drumm’s credits—“electronics, tapes, microphone, computer assistance”—are notably missing the original’s crucial ingredients, “guitar” and “pedals.” Instead of emulating the brushstrokes of the former, Drumm is building a pure noise wall and painting a Picasso on it.
“Exorcism,” the first of two very long tracks, is nearly 43 merciless minutes of monolithic, deafening, blown-the-fuck-out blasting that makes the original album seem as dynamic as Haydn’s “Surprise” symphony. It’s less refined but just as blood-curdling, closer to the “harsh noise wall” antics of artists like the Cherry Point and the Rita, akin to the way Lou Reed’s feedback symphony Metal Machine Music feels like hundreds of robot crabs fighting their way out of a bucket. Moving from boil to simmer to lava eruption, it’s an absolute chest-clutching terror at high volumes. Its highly layered, clashing collisions teem with phantom screams, like the “Well to Hell” urban legend. The second and final track, the 52-minute “Icepick,” is somewhat closer in form to the original Sheer Hellish Miasma—if only in that it sounds like furious tremolo guitar riffage when it doesn’t sound like ball bearings raining on sheet metal. A deep Earth-style doom drone swirling with mutating and spasming digital noise, it decays and decelerates, then kicks back into gear with a giant blast. It may be the only song where the “mosh part” comes at the 29-minute mark.
As far as sequels go, Sheer Hellish Miasma II is less Jay and Silent Bob Reboot and more Twin Peaks: The Return—sure, you might recognize the characters, but the sheer impenetrability of the work lets you know the director is clearly on some other shit. If you appreciated the original for its nuance, its gorgeously pixellated textures, or the way it blurred the lines between Merzbow and Motörhead, prepare to be disappointed. But if you liked Sheer Hellish Miasma for the feeling of staring down a running leafblower, get ready for your face to be blown back by the best organic Botox money can buy.
