"Bludgeoning Simulations," is the tenth release from UK based experimental act, GHOLD and their first on Human Worth, is a brutal treatise on themes of loss, abjection and isolation. The agency of the album unfurls before you as a proboscis - coiled, serpentine and inquisitively searching for a saccharine hit of nectar. Instead, one's taste buds are coated with the worryingly familiar ferric tang of blood. This album denies poetic revery yet delivers a kind of scorched catharsis - ill feeling, malintent and hopelessness are set ablaze and allowed to run free with reckless abandon. One's arms flail as if preaching heresy, one's ears sing with baleful howls, one's eyes become dull, cloudy vessels for half remembered visions of calm.

The album has six songs, and "Cauterise" is first. Eerie piano note lead the song off, and then it descends into a heavy, thudding march with thick bass guitar notes. The vocals are harmonized, and they can barely keep up with the punishing weight of the song. It could crush you into sand. "Lowest" goes even deeper into the massive cave underneath the earth, and the punishing bass guitar notes lead the charge. The harmonized vocals keep the song from completely disappearing into the blackness. "Place to Bless a Shadow" is the longest song, clocking in at over 10 minutes. It begins with more eerie tones, like a prelude to madness. Intermittent drums enter, furthering the fright. It builds slowly, until a towering riff enters towards the end, and it ends with screeching guitars.

"Fallen Debris" has a fast moving groove that reminds of a Dick Dale song, twisted with perversion of course. This one takes no prisoners, and offers no absolution. It's a barbed dagger buried in your back, and by the end, its hypnotic nature will have you questioning your sanity. "Leaves" is another lengthy and creepy song, and the crushing riff offers nothing but complete blackness. It remains slithering in the shadows for most of the song, offering only a rare glimpse of itself, leaving the listener to their imagination. "Rude, Awaken" is the final song, and it crawls slowly with more hypnotic vocals. Rolling towards the end, the sound livens a bit, but still remains absolutely filthy.

Experimental, Post Metal, Industrial…whatever you genre purists label this doesn't matter. The album is a barren wasteland…a vast clearing of the trees in one of the northern most places on the earth. It's so cold, there are no animals…nothing lives there…nothing even grows there. It's like a void that if you dare to enter, you will join its dead.