My introduction to Southern California’s Lord Time was 2013’s Drink My Tears, an hour-long mind-fucking odyssey to the outer fringes of black metal, noise and experimental music which ended up being one of my favorite albums released that year. Since then, the one-man project has only gotten darker, harsher and weirder, as evidenced by the utterly warped Mandatory Human Livestock Reduction, released earlier this year on sole member Andorkappen’s own Universal Consciousness.
Even by the standards of so-called “outsider black metal,” Lord Time’s music is about as outre as it gets. The DNA of black metal is present on Mandatory Human Livestock Reduction, but it is buried deep within a maelstrom of ear-punishing frequencies that at times have more in common with Bloodyminded or Brighter Death Now than they do with Darkthrone or Burzum. This is the work of a musician who has soaked up a wealth of the most abrasive music the world has to offer and distilled it down further to its most corrosive elements to create something that is as enthralling as it is sickening.
Indeed, as brutal as the album is, you can’t help but keep listening as it careens from from overwhelming washes of blown-out power electronics into distortion-submerged blasts of blackened punk and back. One of Andorkappen’s strongest qualities as a songwriter is the manner in which he smashes these soundscapes together to create something that’s varied without ever being so jarring as to disrupt the flow of the music. Each movement within the single thirty-minute long track that makes up Mandatory Human Livestock Reduction feels like a complete “song within a song,” yet at the same time is inextricably tied to the whole.
With Mandatory Human Livestock Reduction, Lord Time’s campaign of sonic torture continues to be a true boon for fans of all things harsh, ugly and fucked up. Andorkappen is a musician who thinks about and understands the commonalities between black metal, punk and noise in a way that few others do; if you’ve ever wondered what Ildjarn’s Forest Poetry would sound like if it got ass-raped by Masonna’s Inner Mind Mystique, your perverse prayers have finally been answered.
THKD 
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