“One of the most captivating and unique sonic cocktails we’ve heard in ages, bela’s debut album is a glistening alloy of repurposed South Korean traditional rhythms, weightless drones, electro-plated club pulses and coarse, industrial metal vocals, all cut thru tempo-fluxing noise like a serrated blade. Utterly essential listening, whatever you’re into, or hover in the vicinity of Raja Kirik, SOPHIE, Liturgy, Pisitakun, Senyawa.” (Boomkat review)

Seoul-raised, now Berlin-based bela takes elements of death metal – specifically the guttural growl, together with abrasive rhythm that bela based on the eotmori jangdan, an irregular, traditional beat that’s been remolded into a jerky, electro-acoustic call to action. While still based in Seoul they began to develop the framework for ‘Noise and Cries (굉음과 울음)’. Chewed up by a society that’s slow to embrace those who exist on the margins, they and their close friends became fixated on the concept of death.

“Track 6, 나락 Pit (a “riot song” in bela’s own words) was written in response to bela’s experience playing DJ sets at tiny South Korean clubs, where they would feel out the ecstatic mid-point between anti-fascist hard dance music and fervid noise. Their lyrics, screamed menacingly through a wall of static, confront the Buddhist concept of hell: narak, or the infinite abyss. They use this as an analogy for the despair young, working class Koreans are confronted with and make the track a call to action, a punk anthem for a despondent digital age. It’s dance music, on some level, but it’s not avoidant or escapist, it shores us in the here and now, wherever our roots might lie. We’ve been absolutely awestruck by this album; not only does it pick apart Korean themes and sounds that might be unfamiliar to Western ears, it reaches across the wider cultural spectrum, ushering in a new era of hybridity that stands in opposition to globalism’s perpetual flattening. It’s a message of hope to outsiders anywhere that while the constant friction of existence might be challenging, it can shape art that’s genuinely transformative.” (Boomkat review, part 2)