Toll – “Christ Knows” – [Cold Spring Records]

Excavated from the hellish core of the earth, this is a reissue of a 1986 LP on Broken Flag from label creator and Ramleh/Skullflower contributor Gary Mundy’s side project. With him here are Mathew Frith, Tim Soar and appearances from pre-Stereolab Tim Gane and Paul Lemos from Controlled Bleeding. Some dank and evil UK industrial noise mixed into dark-wave noir. A vampiric drawl crawling out of the sewers, grinding and piercing amidst caustic guitar volts like exposed wires. Though the vocals are definitely a product of their times, the tortured howls and haunting chants reminiscing of a forsaken life make you feel dirty, disheveled, dejected and delusional. It has a distinctly subterranean feel like a lost message from mole people of forgotten subway lines with cavernous drones at booming low frequencies. The sludgy bass lines maintain the machine rhythms within this sea of noise and snippets of creepy overdubs bring a whole new dimension. Paranoid images of haunted playground swings, wind through chandeliers in dripping dungeons, spiders crawling inside rusted pianos.??