Hunting Lodge: “WILL”
S/M Operations SM01, Recorded 1982/83, released 1983.

1) Na Vilavilairevu
2) We Are They
3) Hand of Glory
4) Shugendo Gyozah / You Are of Me
5) Icepick Method
6) Sounds Like a Picture
7) S/M Operations
8) Will
9) Banishing Dirge

One thing I always hate about a lot of really great music that I have is that I often have to say “yeah…no one probably knew who these guys were in their day, but they did some awesome shit. Too bad they didn’t stick around…” Such is the case with Port Huron, Michigan-based Hunting Lodge, who does some of the crunchiest, most primal industrial beatdown to come out of the USA in that style’s earlier days. But I never saw another thing out of them aside of this album.

After a few metallic pings and plangs, sort of like a more discordant varation on the beginning of Kraftwerk’s “Klingklang”, this HAMMERING rhythm generator thing sets up and just pounds away in this tribal riff, while the HL boys drop in bits of shortwave, metal percussion, moaning Gregorian weirdness and so on. There’s a definite nod to Z’ev’s metal percussion in the sound of this, but it’s all merged with that beatbox hammerfest. Damn fine, this whirling noise.

“We Are They” then fires up…a hideous, distorted, roaring, rumbling, burbling mess. This is like being taken on a journey through a live steam pipe, it is. More radio noises intrude as eerie synth atmospheres drift and wash about. Dark ambient, you say? Sho’nuff is…and it’s a tasty job of it, too. In a way, the way they’re using the radio in here reminds me of Scanner’s work…the voice is just obscured enough that you can ALMOST hear…but not really, which makes it all the more disconcerting.

Next we get a little live stuff, with some strange processing going on that makes it sound like it’s being sent over a defective CB radio while HL’s equipment blows up. Delay-locked screams, more racket, screeches, machine noise, feedback…very horrorshow, cathartic. Later, people would refer to this sort of thing as ‘power electronics’ but back in these times there wasn’t a term for it. HL were definitely charting a strange and new course. Recorded in early 1983. No telling what the audience thought…

“Shugendo Gyozah…” takes us off in a very unsettling direction. More distorted (very!) mechanical rhythm created by some sort of synth under extreme duress, strange voices chanting what might be some sutra, echoed squeals of damaged electronics. There are descriptions in certain Buddhist texts of various Hells. This is probably the elevator music from several of them. This even scares me, to be honest!

We fare no easier on side 2. “Icepick Method” kicks right off, a slab of live stuff from 1982 that couples electronic screeches like some unholy winter wind with metal banging, distorted and unintelligible shouts and screams. Intense, this…and relentless, hurtful…so of course, it’s prime quality! 

“Sounds Like a Picture” is quieter…but still eerie. The whirling wind noise has subsided somewhat here, but echoed and distorted voices intrude along with dental-drill synths and ring-modulated drone-klang. Eventually, a white-noise stutter-beat gets into the fray. If this sounds like a picture, I would be both interested in AND frightened of seeing it!

Then we get their very first recording, which shows very clearly that these boys had it right from Square #1. A subsonic rhythm-rumble begins things, and the drum machine begins to tick along as synths and distortional guitar slide in and out of the mess ominously. In places, the whole mix goes into complete distortion to the point of obliteration. Nothing is safe. Sounds warp and explode unexpectedly.

Now we’re in the home stretch with the title track. This isn’t quite as brain-searing as some of the previous things, and takes us back to something more like “Na Vilavilairevu”. In fact, this sounds like a rather primitive early Skinny Puppy…perhaps if you took half their kit away and replaced it with construction debris and trashed HVAC ductwork and plumbing fixtures.And the final bit, “Banishing Dirge”, is pretty aptly described by its title…a synth drone, sparse pulsing electronic rhythm, which all upwells into this overdriven rrrrzzzzzzzing riff as whirling masses of ethereal racket swirl in and out over the top and it all fades away like some demonic funeral procession heading off into the dark.

If you’ve ever seen any of Dario Argento’s thriller/horror films, you’ll have run across the music he has done specifically for them, often by the Italian outfit Goblin. But to be honest, Hunting Lodge’s music would fit so much better, with its ultra-dark sound and what’s-gonna-happen-next? sort of pacing. I don’t listen to this one much, sort of because of the same reasons I don’t listen to SPK’s “Leichenschrei” much: you have to be in JUST the right mood, or holding a BDSM party for a host of total deviants, or some such. But when that mood hits, this comes on like a rush of bad narcotics and just works you over rough. The sole flaw here is technical; since HL just LOVE all sorts of low-end distortion, they had to cut the record considerably quieter to accomodate all the bottom end and phase screwups, etc. But that’s minor, and of course it’s what the volume knob was invented to remedy. So if you’re having a perfectly lovely day, and you’ve got a copy of this laying around, drop it on and let the assaultive DOOM of Hunting Lodge remind you that there is still fear and horror lurking in the world.