Although I can say that this is an entertaining album, I also have to confess that I don’t think I will listen to it all that often. While it won’t remind anyone of metal, I don’t think, it may be a kind of transition album for metal heads on a quest for pure noise. I only say that because Lockweld use repetitive patterns and a little of the kind of vocalisation a friend of mine—who has a lot of metal in his collection—calls the “cookie monster voice.” I don’t know. It has variety: loud, abrasive noise; strange combinations of tune and grit; transparent electroacoustic lines; techno riffs. But I’m not convinced that it adds up to anything worth listening to again and again. It seems like it should. Maybe it’s that Lockweld had not decided, in this album, what to do—and that that’s why it all sounds a little tentative. Maybe it’s that I had a bad morning and nothing would please me, not even Government Alpha.

Give it a listen, is all I can say, and judge for yourself. At their prices, the very worst Ground Fault is not much of a risk. And five years from now, who knows. This very album might be your favorite. Or mine. (N.B., you realize of course the absurdity of using a word like “worst” in the same sentence as “Ground Fault.”)

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