Statiqbloom
Splintered Fingers
self-released

Fade Kainer’s Statiqbloom has two fairly distinct eras; the electro-industrial years spanning from the project’s foundation in 2014 to around 2020, and the more freeform era (the beginning of which coincided roughly with Kainer’s move to Berlin from Brooklyn) which explore industrialized techno, dark ambient, and rhythmic noise, amongst other sounds. New album Splintered Fingers situates itself between the latter styles handily, unifying them via Statiqbloom’s propensity for blackened textures and depressive ambience.

Whether or not Kainer set out to split the difference on the album isn’t clear, but there are plenty of callbacks to his recent history, often reconstituted and recontextualized for effect. “Salt the Flower (stripped back version)” takes the noisy and clamorous cut from recent Hands Production release The Casket Nest and carves away the beats, leaving only reverbed drones, half-chanted vocals and ominous waves of feedback that threatens to drag the whole song under. It’s quite reminiscent of the work he was doing on Winter, although the extremity of its sound, shared by cuts like the brief “Threshold” and the thrumming “Sedated Presence” bring to mind his Kain LP for Sonic Groove.

Still, Kainer is ever reluctant to sit still for any period of time, and there are hints of new directions sprinkled throughout the proceedings. Opener “Grave Procession” feels like a classic powernoise cut in its rhythm, but the thick layer of saturation that sits atop its relentless tempo has a sort of smothering tension to it, like the beats are slowly being churned into nothing as the song goes on. Alternately, on “Groundless” the slow tempo and funereal pads have the same sensibility as much of the witch house revival sound, albeit with a nod to the lo-fi sound of early black metal. While not new in terms of sonics, they’re certainly formations we haven’t heard Kainer try his hand at explicitly, and could easily prove to be fertile ground for the prolific artist.

Like most of Statiqbloom’s 2020’s output, Splintered Fingers is about mood above all else; even on the record’s centerpiece track “H.O.M.K.V. (live)”, an eight minute excursion into some truly gnarly beats and shouted vocals, there’s a bleak strain of pained emotion that informs the proceedings. Regardless of whatever sounds Fade Kainer is trying his hand at, his particular brand of rage and woe will mark it as his own.