Starting in 2007, the Truth About Frank is an experimental/noise/ project based in Leeds, UK. After a succession of compilation appearances and EPs, the duo’s first full-length Cannibal Work Ethic was released in July on their own label L.Y.F. Recordings. It is difficult to synopsize The Truth About Frank’s sound, as they throw elements of dark ambient, early Throbbing Gristle, and noise into a blender and set the thing to 11.

Things start with ‘Love is a Cage’- which features a vocal contribution from Tsendpurev Tsegmid- we enter sparsely populated spaces, decorated with of alien sounds, and a truly grating voice that repeats the same sentence ad nauseam. While many would simply write this off as labyrinthine noodling for the sake of it, things pick up a bit with the frenzied, stannic percussion of ‘Channeling Static’ – it is also one of the only tracks approaching a “song” in the traditional sense of the word.

‘A Butterfly Mind’ is a droning dirge that clocks in just less than 5 minutes, combining tape loops and tenuous drum machines with a detached, clinical voice. ‘Teddy Hop’ combines sparse, nightmarish sounds with a truly unsettling voiceover. Things approach Eno-esque melodic experimentation and ambience with ‘Swimming Over Mountains;’ ‘Shadow Sex’ is darker, with an urgent, gritty post-punk bass line and disorienting voices.

The record picks up again with the droning, majestic, almost Witch House-sounding ‘A Savage Invitation’- the perfect soundtrack for late-night shadow play in underground tunnels. The closer ‘Taritakoom’, is a nadir of sorts, tenebrous drums and sheet metal rhythms clamor in the background, while machine-like whirs limp to the end. Ultimately, the music itself (much like the faceless people in the non-linear artwork) becomes a photocopy of the society the duo finds itself living in: an Orwellian phantasm of inauthenticity awash in post-punk noise aesthetic.

This is the kind of album that I confess would work better on some mind-altering substances; with the repetitive, drone-like nature of the compositions, Cannibal Work Ethic is a frustratingly esoteric record that seems at times impenetrable; but I don’t want to say that this record is a complete loss. To be quite “frank”, the duo is working within a set stratum of post-industrial noise that I personally find furtive for its own sake, circumscribed and economic for its own good; Cannibal Work Ethic is an album that will appeal to only a marginally small percentage of the music-listening population. However, I qualify this: for the crowd that bemoans the loss of “true industrial” to planet terror-banana and future-melon invaders intravenously injected with trance, The Truth About Frank are flickers of hope, while those who enjoy the dense and highly abstract, not to mention pessimistic, naked world view the project reflects, will find something to latch onto here. For the rest of us, I will venture to simply say it’s not my cup of tea.