The Industrial Twilight: Noise Jihad

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Noise Jihad - "Jihad" [2013]

Artist: Noise Jihad

Title: Jihad

Genre: Harsh Noise

Country: Russia
Year: 2013

Track List:

Jihad Bil Saif
Jihad Bil Yad
Jihad Bil Qalb
Jihad Bil Lisan
al-Jihad al-Akbar

Surely, we don't live in the 80s anymore, and a skeleton on the cover of your favourite metal album won't scare even your grandmother nowadays. However, there still are topics with a decent potential to shock the audience, one of which is Islamic radicalism. This topic was pioneered by Bryn Jones (Muslimgauze) well before 9/11 (not to mention the Islamic State insurgency or Charlie Hebdo shooting), and then continued by numerous projects which are making witch house remixes of nasheeds (it's a very popular trend by now, at least here).

Now we have a 100% digital noise project based out of Ivanovo, which have released dozens of albums and EPs in just one year under different aliases (Noise Jihad, Hargeysa, Virtual Mosque, and so on). Just like Bryn Jones, the anonymous person behind Noise Jihad focuses on Islamic aesthetics and imagery, and just like Bryn Jones (who never actually visited Palestine or Middle East in general, despite recording a shitton of Middle Eastern-themed albums), he doesn't seem to have a really deep knowledge of the affairs he writes music about. That said, I'm not an Arabist or Islamic scholar too, so I'm not sure if I'm in the position to judge his work.

I haven't listened to the whole vast discography of Noise Jihad (and, frankly, I don't want to), but out of what I've heard so far, I'd recommend "Jihad" for starters. If you don't like it, don't bother yourself listening to the rest of Noise Jihad's releases.

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).