Opening up ear, senses, and thoughts to a chilling dystopian landscape which invades the physical and mental depths of sanity, Permeate the new album from Distortion Of Events is a startling and provocative release which is as impossibly addictive as it is disturbingly intimidating. There are no safe corners to hide or find warmth and security within as the nine track excursion into stark yet compelling realms captures the imagination but with stirring and invigorating rewards along the way it is a danger well worth welcoming.
Distortion Of Events is the solo project of Michael Lubert, a composer/musician from Patton, Pennsylvania which though it had existed in experimental and theoretical forms long before, made its introduction with the four-song demo Inclusium in 2010. A solid base for the inventive experiments and innovations to come the release was followed a year later by debut album Congeners on Lubert’s own platform label, Zodarion Records. A mix of industrial and techno shadows the release drew good attention with essences of Sleep Chamber, Clock DVA, Front 242, and The Klinik cast as comparisons to its creative offering. The album offered up the track Deadface which with ‘a rather severe facelift’ for a digital-only remix single became a firm favourite with fans and local radio. The pair of successful releases made way for Eventuality in the May of last year, the six track EP venturing into even darker waters and depths of those first investigated on Congeners. This was then followed by a reinvented and re-recorded digital-single Blain County, Idaho (Circa 1974), a track originally found on the Inclusium demo and the In Six Dimensions/Nonexistence and The Widow singles. With Permeate our debut dip into the world of Distortion Of Events we cannot not comment on what came before but on the evidence presented by the outstanding new release it is hard to imagine previous encounters were anything less than dramatically provocative and incitingly potent.
Permeate opens with Shivering, a track with a title as apt as you can imagine as the song invites tingles down the spine at its apocalyptic 
seeming embrace. Cored by a steel industrial beat wrapped in refrigerated weaves of electro intrigue and grim melodic narratives, the track escorts thoughts into an uncompromising and evocative realm of menace and cyber haunting. The often fleeting and persistent twists of sound and additives border on bedlamic yet are precise and carefully layered to reap the fullest emotion. It makes for a riveting and intensive start which is an powerful invitation into the album that refuses to take no for an answer.
The title track steps up next to reward entry with an underlying groove and swagger which ignites thoughts of early, but not very early Ministry whilst the devilish appetite of the track especially after its threatening lull, returns with a renewed predation which points to current bands like The Devilzwork though a taste of Young Gods is also louder than a whisper.
The insidiously addictive Ghrelin soon has limbs and adrenaline working overtime, its corrosive mix of rhythmic badgering and acidic melodic twisting a virulent infection around the malevolent tones of Lubert. Again there is an underbelly to the song which comes from a groove of pure contagion bred from an invention which makes it more than just a tool to seduce and a perfect vibrant if blistering hue to the vocal narrative. It is a riveting continuation of what is a rising stature and potency within the album, the further you let it damage synapse, thoughts, and soul the better it gets and impresses. Both the next up Discursion and Innermost push the album to greater heights though split by Sometimes Wounded which makes demands which some will flee from you feel.
The first of the trio is dancefloor toxicity, well if you need a soundtrack to a zombie attack on a packed sea of twisting bodies. With jagged rhythms and a taunting unrelenting heartbeat driven by deliciously serpentine vocals amid splatters of sonic and melodic blood, the track is pure contagion of epidemic proportions, its industrialised stomp the voice to destructive lures from which there is no return. Its successor is a flight, or maybe fall, into the darkest cavernous and perilous shadows, their black embrace cold and confining whilst triggering the imagination and emotions to drift or be chased into best avoided avenues. It is not an easily accessible encounter, which is saying something as no track on Permeate is sculpted to welcome, but one which paints a tomb which is as oppressive as it is descriptive. The third of the three in comparison is a vibrant waltz, one speared by an artillery of spiteful rhythms, acidic melodies, and devious chimes which lay down a beckoning persuasion into another caustic rapacious treat.
As each track explores the laid out world or is it your fearful mind, either is applicable, the tracks and invention display a blend of impacting horrors, cosmic menace, and deep rooted mysticism which especially seems to take its place to the fore with the hypnotic Saw Tawm. A mesmeric wash of primal mystique and tribal instinct driven by an overpowering rhythmic slavery to ensure full submission to its glorious tower of temptation and richly coaxing vocal intonations, the track is the pinnacle of the album, the song you would share blood with.
The opening electro pressing of Numinous expands into a more regular type of song, celestially bred melodies swaying in the sky of the track like torchlight within an industrial air raid of forbidding sonic austerity to spawn another intriguing and imagination sparking venture whilst Mantra is simply a hellish closure not only to the album but sanity. It completes a thrilling album which is not always an easy listen and for some will mean running for the hills to escape its honest provocation and mordant textures. For us though Permeate is pungent industrial manna and one of the most exhilaratingly demanding albums of the year.
http://distortionofevents.bandcamp.com/album/permeate-2
https://www.facebook.com/distortionofevents
9/10
RingMaster 28/08/2013
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