HARLOTS - 'Betrayer' (Lifeforce) RATING: 5/10 Buy now

By RYAN MAVITY

You know the cliché “sound and fury signifying nothing?” Of course you do. I bring it up because that cliché is about all I could think of while listening to Betrayer, the latest release by American experimental metal band Harlots. There is a shitload of noise during the 43 minutes of this record, but I am clueless as to what it all adds up to.

Keep in mind that I have nothing against noisecore or experimental extreme metal. After all, I am the guy who enjoyed The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, who is just as noisy and loud as Harlots. But at least with Danza there is a subversive sense of humor at work. There is something there underneath the noise—you know, a point to the thing. The Danza record is cartoonishly violent and chaotic, and the music reflected that. Betrayer, on the other hand, is just loud, long and repetitive. Even two-minute songs become boring as the band pounds riffs into submission while frontman Christian Fillippo screams incomprehensibly over top. Even one of the best songs on the album, “Dried Up Goliathan,” is ruined by going on for an interminable eight minutes. Why did they need to stretch this track out so long when half the song is just the same guitar lines with an overdubbed voice over top?

The band redeems itself a little with the final track, “Suicide Medley.” It’s another long one—12 minutes—but here it kind of works. It starts out as a heavy, sludgy instrumental before taking on a spacey, ambient, 2001 feel to it before exploding into a full-on noise metal freakout and ending with the band breaking shit in the studio. Something develops here that hasn’t been present throughout the album: a legit sense of surprise and an almost symphonic feel. It’s kind of hard to believe the bunch that turned out the first eight tracks on this record could dream up something this daring.

Nonetheless, by that point it’s too little too late. This band supposedly has a cult following, according to Lifeforce Records, but count me among the unconverted.