Dark, vicious, relentless. This may be all you need to know about The Seven Tongues from The Kali Ensemble. A side project of Michael Page, the man behind Sky Burial–a noise project I enjoy–The Kali Ensemble seems intent on pure alienation with this disc. There is neither point of entry nor release, and that’s clearly by design. After all, Kali is the destroyer. But I found myself needing to jump forward, hoping to escape the initial onslaught–it was just that claustrophobic. There are places where the pressure lets up slightly, which is to say that it stops kicking you in the skull for a minute, but I wonder how many listeners have the aural fortitude to take this kind of hyper-industrial beating. This is like sitting in the middle of a storm of sharp metal. As I said, I find much of Michael Page’s noise and drone work interesting. Past reviews here will certainly bear that out. But this is one of those cases where I have to say that if your tastes run toward very heavy, dark, industrial and experimental noise, you look into it and see if it suits you. As for me, I’m going to take a couple aspirin and hug someone.

Available from Phage Tapes.