Modern Technology: Conditions of Worth

The gloomy frontiers of doom and noise-rock have experienced yet another successful year across Ol’ Blighty.

It’s a bourgeoning climate for artistic expression that inhabits the hard edges. The implications of Brexit continuing to peddle its misery across all corners of the United Kingdom, and it’s not a stretch to say that there’s something festering. Just walking the streets, and you can actually feel an unsettling shift evolve.

While such discontent will significantly pale in comparison with the atrocities that have taken place in other parts of the world over the past week, perhaps the unrest can be viewed through a similar prism insofar as trying to underline a society that feels more extreme than ever.

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Some of that anger can be heard Modern Technology’s latest offering. Consisting of vocalist/bassist Chris Clarke and drummer Owen Gildersleeve (Old Mayor and founder of Human Worth), the London duo return with their second LP, Conditions of Worth.

While their 2021 debut, Service Provider, had its moments, there was plenty of meat left on the bone for the duo to sink their fangs in to: it’s prevalent on Conditions of Worth. An album not only fit for these times, but one that also feeds into the ideals of the Human Worth label (both titles go a long way in telling the story).

Clarke possesses one of the most chilling screams in the current doom pantheon. His delivery, contaminated with bile and haste. The kind of sorrowful howl that would bring the most hardened criminal to his knees. Raw, primal, and infinitely real, not only does Clarke’s vocals separate Modern Technology from their riff hungry contemporaries, but the noise both he and Gildersleeve muster as a two-piece is unprecedented.

With the help of Misha Hering at London’s Holy Mountain Studios with mastering duties once again falling to ultimate fixer from behind the soundboards in Stephen Kerrison, Modern Technology begin their escape from the black pits with Dead Air. “We stared death in the face/ And death blinked first/ The crushing vacuum of the universe” spits Clarke amid a low rumble of fuzz that emerges through thick smoke.

Salvation is like a primal roar from the void. Lumbering doom that completely lifts the fur, while The Space Between is weighed down with the kind of morbid atmosphere that are the seeds of depression. (“I won’t stay/ I’m not welcome,” sings Clarke. So fraught with fear, you can imagine him on hands and knees begging for mercy as he delivers the words.

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Stay In Lane continues in much the same vein, navigating through tangle barbed wire as the fierce maelstrom that hits us almost feels inconceivable that a two-piece can be responsible for this. Think Part Chimp and keep pumping up the volume.

Then there’s the volcanic eruption of the title track. “You can’t see the real me” confesses Clarke, his scream blood curdling. A defining message from the mire of lockdown. Both sonically and lyrically, here Modern Technology showcase their finest elements (“I can’t believe / It’s happening to me”). And with a swift change in pace, we enter the final frontier with Believer – a fizzy slab of bowel juddering doom that’s filled with the kind of menacing atmosphere that can only be born from prolonged torment.

For those who believe Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have gone a bit too heavy in their Sabbath worship, sonically Modern Technology isn’t just the best alternative: it’s the only alternative. Different bands of course, for Modern Technology’s missives cut far closer to the bone. There’s no fun or piss-taking here. Only despair, and on Conditions of Worth, Clarke and Gildersleeve may have found their natural habitat.

Conditions of Worth is out Friday via Human Worth. Purchase from Bandcamp.