Rozz Williams
The Whorse’s Mouth (Hollows Hill)
by Angela Daughti
Far from the days of Christian Death, Rozz Williams has grown into his own. Expanding on his last album with Gitane Demone (also X- C. Death), Dream Home Heartache, his spoken word monologues have taken a step forward. Going beyond “typical” Goth and morbid backgrounds, he has decided to go exploring in unfamiliar, and fertile, sonic territories. His music has become much more experimental on The Whorse’s Mouth. Cataloging his experiences in both shooting up and kicking heroin (hence the title, a disquieting pun, expressing the joys, sordid realities, and gaping voids of addiction in one concise phrase), his choice of textures and auditory support for his poetry and prose is sometimes as disturbing as the words themselves. On the first track, “Temptation,” he uses Neubauten-like rhythms and sounds, like an ironworks slowly ripping itself from its foundations, no definitive time or chord structure, just a revolving cataclysm winding its way toward destruction. He goes back to the Dream Home… feel on “Life is but a Dream,” with solo piano, but the notes are more atonal this time around, throwing the piece into darker territory. “Who’s in Charge Here?” uses minimalistic tribal percussion with deep rumblings behind it, while “HER Only sIN” has a stricken trance drumbeat with a mournful chord progression, almost typical, but not quite. The last song, “Best of the Breed,” contains instruments distorted beyond recognition, while a Mo Tucker drumbeat holds it all steady as Williams lays his voice gently on the top, spieling away about pain and aggravation. One of the most disturbing tracks is “Raped,” which seems to be samples of fist-fucking videos, a young girl-child on an answering machine, and a deep-voiced man who claims to be “the world’s most famous anal rapist.” On top of all this is Williams, criticizing all that he sees, layer upon layer, building to a dizzying pattern, lending itself towards nausea. Some call his voice overly pretentious (and where did he get that English accent, anyway?), but in order to understand The Whorse’s Mouth, you must accept it, accept it as a voice that deserves to be pretentious, for whatever reasons work best for you. Take his high, lilting voice and let it envelop you, surround you with its bitter warmth, giving jewels of indiscernible wisdom, unknown pearls except for those who have lived through his nightmare of junk and misery. This is a lonely album, it gives off its loss with every word, every note. A loss of the venomous opiate which masked his life, and a loss of missing years spent plunging needles into veins.
