Iugula-Thor

condition (record/cover): NM / EX- (minimal wear)

Insert and MH catalogues included.

The debut Iugula-Thor release, a 12" 45 RPM EP on Minus Habens catalogued MHR 008, pressed in 1992 with a two-sided 29 x 21 cm info-sheet insert ("A Hyperes Production"). Iugula-Thor is the project of Milanese musician Andrea Chiaravalli, assisted on this record by Paolo Bandera (credited NG5361, also of Sshe Retina Stimulants and Sigillum S) and Eraldo Bernocchi (Surrealistick Master, also Sigillum S); the three co-wrote both tracks.

Two sides, two pieces. A: "I.N.R.I. (Iugulans Necro Rex Insanorum)," ten minutes of darkly ritualised industrial electronics whose acronym the group re-derives from the standard Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum into "throat-cutting dead king of the insane." B: "Propeller Sodom Lucifer / Pigskull Loudspeaker," thirteen minutes of even denser machine-noise with Chiaravalli's tracheal vocals weaving through.

The project's stated inspirations (the Process Church of the Final Judgment, Algernon C. Swinburne's sadomasochistic poetry, the death instinct) pointed forward to what Iugula-Thor would become across the subsequent decade: one of the key projects on the Italian power electronics axis that also included Sigillum S, Sshe Retina Stimulants, and Atrax Morgue. This is the point of origin.