Review: Clinging to the Trees Of A Forest Fire – Visceral

Denvor-based sludge-grind trio Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire released their EP Visceral last summer from Prosthetic Records. I’ve just now got around to giving it a spin, and I can tell you now – visceral it most certainly is.

This isn’t music – it’s a sonic assault that leaves your eardrums broken and your emotions and intestines in a puddle or slurry at your feet. I can hear blastbeats and fuzzy bass and some screeching guitar, and above it all, Ethen McCarthy howling like a madman, but it’s not a metal band putting together riffs and lyrics and drum fills – it’s something inhuman, something other.

After a minute or so of angry ambient introduction, you’re thrown headfirst into the pit of brutality with “Lower than Life, High as the Sky”, which is exactly three minutes and fifty-four seconds longer than the average person would be able to handle before they ran screaming from the room and proceeded to stick a ratchett in their ear in an attempt to remove any trace of this vile cacophony from their cranium. This song, I read in an interview, is about trying to be a functioning member of society while being a drug addict/alcoholic/musician. O’m not personally any one of those things, and don’t think I ever want to be if THAT’S what it feels like. This is raw anger – pure, unadulterated rage. This is the mess inside your head when you see red and your brain switches off. I can’t even try to understand the lyrics … it seems as if venturing too deep into these songs could take you somewhere you really don’t want to go.

“Special Education” – a song about working in a special ed classroom alongside someone you utterly despise – is another grating anthem of funeral grind. This album conjures up nightmarish images that stay flickering in the back of your mind long after the sixteen minutes of this physicall barrage of gut-wrenching, rage-inducing noise fade into blessed silence.

Even the stout of heart will find Visceral a bit of a mind-fuck. The weak will be flattened into human pancakes by this cement roller of abstracted, dissonant rage.

Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire have announced they will be embarking on a “7 Years of Disillusion Tour”, reaching 15 US cities from In March/April 2012, alongside Connecticut’s Sea of Bones. ou can catch them in the following cities:

March 13th-El Paso, TX @ La Casa Sam W/ Communion of Thieves
14th-San Antonio, TX@ 1011 W/ Colonia
15th-Austin, TX@ 1808 annex
16th-Arlington, TX @ THE RANCH bar & grill
17th-Dallas, TX @ Queen City Hall W/ Kill the Client, Baring Teeth, Akkolyte, Tyranosorceress
23rd-Omaha,NE @ West Wing
24th-Dekalb, IL @ 7th St. Space W/ SICK/TIRED
25th-Jackson, MI @ Bird Alley W/ Sender Receiver, Bruxism, Scum, Isenblast, Discerned
26th-NYC@ Lit Lounge w/SEA OF BONES, The Year is One, Radiation Black Body, Head Snatcher
27th-Queens, NY@ HillTap Tavern W/ SEA OF BONES
28th-Boston, MA@ O’briens pub W/ SEA OF BONES, IN THE SHIT
29th-Brooklyn, NY @ St. Vitus BarW/SEA OF BONES, The Communion, Amputee, Scowl
30th-Columbus, OH@ The Summit
31st-Peoria, IL @ The Brass Rail
April 1st-Kansas City, MO @ Asshole Castle

Keep up to date with CTTTOAFF on their blog, or like their Facebook page to hear some of their demonic, visceral split with Nesseria.