Mortification To The Flesh – Live - Studio [Cass] (1987, Sound Of Pig)

If you’re digging through the late-80s cassette underground, this is one of those weird, half-forgotten gems that perfectly captures how DIY things really were back then. 

First off, the tape came out on Sound of Pig, which already tells you a lot about what you’re getting into. This wasn’t a traditional record label -it was part of the global cassette culture network, putting out hundreds of releases during the mid-to-late ’80s, mostly in the experimental, industrial, and noise realms. These tapes weren’t sitting in record shops; they were traded through the mail, passed between fans, and discovered through fanzines. 

Mortification To The Flesh itself was essentially the first proper release from the project (often linked to the German act Bogart), and it’s exactly what the title promises: a hybrid of live and studio recordings. Part of the material was recorded in a studio setting, while the rest was captured live at the V2 Organisation in the Netherlands, giving the tape this split personality. One moment things feel relatively controlled, and the next it sounds like everything could fall apart at any second -in a good way.

 
Listening to it now, the vibe is unmistakably late-80s underground. It sits somewhere between industrial, experimental sound collage, and early noise, but it’s less about fitting into a genre and more about atmosphere. The recordings are lo-fi, the structures are loose, and there’s a strong sense that what you’re hearing wasn’t meant to be perfected. It’s raw, sometimes chaotic, and very much rooted in the moment it was recorded. 

That “live-studio” mix makes it even more interesting, because you can actually hear the contrast between the two environments. The studio parts feel slightly more contained, while the live recordings bring in unpredictability and a bit of tension, like the performance could veer off track at any point. That push and pull is a big part of what gives the tape its character. 

Context-wise, this release sits right in the middle of the cassette trading era, when underground artists were building international connections without the internet. Labels like Sound of Pig acted as hubs, distributing small-run tapes to a global network of listeners who were actively searching for the strange and the obscure. A release like this wasn’t just music -it was a signal that you were tapped into that world. 

Interestingly, this wasn’t a one-off. The project followed it up with 'Le Trésor Maudit' in 1988, which feels like a more developed continuation, making this cassette come across as a kind of raw starting point rather than a fully formed statement. 

 

 

Label: Sound Of Pig – SOP 85 

Format: Cassette, C60 

Country: US 

Released: 1987 

Style: Industrial 

 

Tracklist: 

Studio 

A1 Intro 1:34 

A2 Faust 6:03 

A3 Poursuite 3:53 

A4 Alles Lüge 6:41 

A5 Irdische Ergötzlichkeiten 6:05 

A6 Wege-Schrei 6:08 

Live 

B1 V2, s'Hertogenbosch 11:11 

B2 Arratta, Moers 13:49 

 

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