Year: 2024
Label: Zoharum

We’re back with a couple of old friends om this split release. We reviewed Larmo’s debut album Alarm not too long ago (here); Nothing Has Changed on the other hand is the project of Michael “Neithan” Kielbasa, familiar from projects such as Lugola, Whalesong and Harmony Of Struggle, all of whom have featured on these venerable pages before.

This time around the two have united forces in the form of a split album. Featuring four tracks from each, even together this CD has a rather modest running time: only 30 minutes. That’s more like a mini-album. So what we get is essentially a surface scratch from both artists.

Stylistically, Larmo and Nothing Has Changed are a good fit. Perhaps even too good: listening to this CD, it’s all too easy to miss when one act changes into the other. Both perform a form of rhythmic, electronic industrial with a rather crisp and clear, digital sound to it. There’s not much in terms of analogue grime here; instead, Grey Zone is all about cold, sterile clarity.

Where Larmo’s debut album had moments of industrial techno, on Grey Zone Larmo slow things down a bit. This means that even though the sonic landscape is similar, featuring percussion sounds and patterns more familiar from more danceable electronic music, here the patterns are too slow to be danceable. Backed by atonal, abstract hums, metallic drones and whirring sounds, the music of both artists amalgamates electronica with more abstract industrial.

The split suffers from a couple of things. The first is the lack of distinction between the two artists. Admittedly, this may not be a factor that disturbs everyone – and certainly enough, when putting this on as background music, it might even be for the better. But nonetheless, I’m a bit miffed by the fact that the pairing is so sonically similar, that it’s next to impossible to tell the two apart.

The second is the sameyness of the material. Most of the tracks are built from the same elements of slow, languid electronic beats and aforementioned humming, whirring, droning sounds. Grey zone turns into a bit of a grey mass, with as few discerning factors between tracks as between artists.

As background listening, Grey Zone is a decent piece of not-too-abrasive industrial electronics. However, more focused listening does not yield many rewards for reasons mentioned above. With a running time of a mere half hour, luckily this does not become too aggravated a problem.

Visit Larmo on Bandcamp or Facebook
Visit Nothing Has Changed on Bandcamp or Facebook