Burial Grid : NORD Compendium

Adam Michael Kozak, aka Burial Grid, has always had a fascination with the dark corners of life. His modular/analog electronic music has always been more of the glitchy and nervous variety, as if manifesting darkness, anxiety, and fear through square waves and circuital curiosity. And while a lot of artists make dark and foreboding electronic music, they seem to do it more as some kind of musical fashion. A kind of wink and nudge to the listener letting them know that “Hey, you get it. Right? This is just a character.” Burial Grid’s music isn’t a put-on. It’s Kozak’s genuine curiosity regarding the bad that comes with the good of living; the dark, painful, and decomposing flesh of a life lived as best it could.

Albums like My Body Dissolves as I Watch and Dissolve, We’ve Come For Your Flesh and Music For No Tomorrow are loud, abrasive, and linger somewhere between Throbbing Gristle, Skinny Puppy, and early NIN. Industrial music that puts you in the haunted machine known as Burial Grid. That’s not to say that Kozak can’t make quiet, subtle music. His albums Shores of Quiddity and Waves of Quietus were made as the musical equivalent of therapy during Covid times.

Burial Grid’s newest album, the noisy and sinister NORD Compendium, is a power drill to the cerebellum. A chaotic, buzzsaw of an electronic album that explores the breaking down of the body…literally. From the album cover to the songs named after rare body conditions, NORD Compendium is a sort of musical equivalent of Gray’s Anatomy through the eyes of August Underground.

This album is not for the weak of heart(or ear.) It’s abrasive and caustic at times, and works throughout the runtime to get under your skin like Chromhidrosis(a rare condition characterized by the secretion of colored sweat. It is caused by the deposition of lipofuscin in the sweat glands.)

But for fans of noisy and brash experimental music, NORD Compendium is a smorgasbord of inventive composition, in-depth concepts, and a way to explore dark themes with inquisitive eyes and a genuine curiosity. “Sirenomelia Sequence” opens in glitchy modular blips and beeps with ghostly vocoder’d vocals. It’s as catchy as it is disturbing, with a propulsive rhythm that is equal parts Godflesh and Reznor.

Throughout NORD Compendium the music slinks and hisses, and with the addition of distorted vocals you feel like you’re hearing something cursed. The heavily-effected voices sound like some demented incantation. “Pseudomyxoma Peritonei” is sparse with echoing voices giving it all a feeling of being lost in some cavernous chasm. “Goodpasture Syndrome” is the sound of something breaking down, being pulled from one world to the next.

NORD Compendium is an endlessly creative and engaging study of the breaking down of ourselves, both literally and figuratively. In the words of Adam Michael Kozak, NORD Compendium is “a body of work about the body in ruin.” Breaking down never sounded so good.