W.I.P. - Feral EP

W.I.P. - Feral EP
CDR. 15 copies.
No contact info.



W.I.P. [which I’m reliably informed isn’t an acronym for Work In Progress] was pushed into my eager mitt during last November's Con-Dom 30th Anniversary all night freeze out in Birmingham by one of the organisers who just so happens to be one half of the outfit in question.

As far as I’m aware, said person, Phil Taylor, a person with experience in organising noise related gigs in and around the Birmingham area, had never before appeared on stage, or disc, with his Power Electronics hat on. Being so obviously a fan of the genre one can only wonder why it had taken him so many, many years to finally get it together and do something? It's not like he's getting any younger.

Perhaps he was waiting for the right partner to come along, which is where Lee Howard, another Brum habitue, and only member of Iron Fist of the Sun comes in. IFOTS, I’ve seen play a few times and have always enjoyed. IFOTS play PE in the classic sense of distorted vocals coupled to throbbing industrial rhythms played at ear piercing volumes. There’s probably more to it than that and I’ll probably be taken to task by Howard for not mentioning the Diana Spencer fixation or the electro-acoustic influences but there you go.

Phil Taylor made for a menacing presence on the night, his vocals appearing, as is PE custom, totally distorted and stripped of meaning. The onslaught was welcome and although their set was short they made their mark.

There’s only two tracks on the Feral EP both of which they played on the night.  Emerging at just shy of twenty minutes these two tracks show enough promise to warrant further visits to the studio [or the pub as is more likely]. ‘Why?’ Begins with a sampled rant on apathy as culled from the recent Southcliffe TV drama [a terrific tirade delivered by Rory Kinnear in which he attacks his parents apathy ‘so long as you’ve got your pint and your Beckham baseball cap ...’] before an ominous throb emerges followed by those shrieking, distorted vocals. ‘Elemental’ is initially far more subdued, incorporating thunderstorms going though various effects and some synth laden howling winds before some much clearer vocals appear [‘do you understand what wrong means?’] of course all hell breaks loose eventually but not until we’ve had some sampled female dialogue and further destroyed PE delivery.



Both tracks are available to listen to through the IFOTS Soundlcloud page.



https://soundcloud.com/search?q=ironfistofthesun%2C