Man Is Wolf to Man

With their new album, ‘Man Is Wolf To Man’, Bolt Gun have created a sonic, cinematic epic that depicts the existential horror of Stalinist Russia. Like a Pink Floyd epic unfolding in some kind of nightmare dimension, the group takes listeners across the decimated countrysides, through the villages thinned through famine, through the cities choking with fear, and finally deep into the gulags where millions died of starvation, disease, overwork, torture and execution. It is a vision of almost transcendent horror. To their credit, Bolt Gun walk this territory with considerable subtlety - their work is not an explosion of aural violence, but rather a meditative, multi-faceted, and slowly underfolding cinematic journey, which utilises elements of 1970s progressive and psychedelic music, fused with aspects of black metal, post-rock, ambience and drone. Drifting through the wreckage of shattered bone and screaming psyches, we can hear influence from groups like Swans, Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, Einstuerzende Neubauten, The Necks, Khanate and Corrupted. For this album, Bolt Gun drew influence from Konstantin Lopushansky "A Museum Visitor", as well as works by Tarkovsky and Kieslowski. For this reason, the album is best accompanied by imagery from these films.