Uniform and the Body are two duos who have consistently challenged, and sometimes obliterated, the boundaries between genres such as metal, noise, punk, and industrial. They both make intense, violent music utilizing deconstructed samples and copious amounts of hair-raising screaming, and they both write about topics such as depression, anxiety, hopelessness, anger, and death. As the two acts geared up for a tour together in 2017, they immediately began discussing potential collaborations. Uniform’s Michael Berdan appeared on the Body’s 2018 full-length I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer., and the two acts recorded an album titled Mental Wounds Not Healing. The LP is brief and to the point, containing seven songs of pummeling…
…electronic beats, searing feedback noise, and duels pitting Berdan’s punkish snarl against Chip King’s piercing shrieks. It’s highly claustrophobic and unsettling, and it’s an extremely powerful release of negative emotions.
While the album consistently maintains a bleak, enraged attitude throughout, the tracks vary in different styles. “The Curse of Eternal Life” is a hard drum’n’bass thrill ride, with rapidly skittering beats and Berdan’s voice distorted so that it sounds like a Dalek. “Come and See” crawls to the depths of sludge, with nervous vibrations bubbling up from brutally slow drum crashes. “The Boy with Death in His Eyes” is more of an industrial death shuffle, with waves of metallic fuzz covering a crisply distorted machine beat. Even though the album’s songs are unmistakably grim and terror-stricken, and there isn’t much of a positive outlook to any of it, the anthemic qualities of songs like “Empty Comforts” still manage to make them sound affirming and even soothing. Both acts mesh perfectly with each other, and Mental Wounds Not Healing is a brilliant, seamless collaboration.