From Radium:

Be my enemy", proclaims Audio Immolation Industries' first album length release, which less than surprisingly sports the name Fire in the Head on its cover. Once again Michael Page vents some pressure in the form of rough, deformed noise at health-endangering volume levels, so if you're in pursuit of rich melodies and angelic sounds, better start clicking the browser's back button.

If, for some reason, Fire in the Head is not a familiar name yet, the best way to describe his sound is an amalgam of harsh noise and power electronics, where constantly mutating, dirty walls of sound meet vocals that are often said out in a cold, even tone full of despise. Sometimes, but only sometimes, the sounds quiet down to a momentary lull, but even at a full pace FITH's mood is much closer to threatening and menacing than outright aggression. Something like this should've without question been on the sound track of Saw, last year's most entertaining comedy, instead of dumb toned down guitar wankery.

Be My Enemy is a mean disc. It utilises every frequency available from room shaking basses to debilitating high ends without sounding muddy or unclear, and every sound seems to have only one purpose: to make the listener cringe, and the only thing that varies is intensity. Hard, even noise usually leads to hard, even boredom, but on Be My Enemy the tracks are sonically varied enough to fend off dullness. Headphones are recommended, because all the little detail embedded in the cacophony takes the experience a level further.

My personal favourites are without question the opener When This No Longer Satisfies, the outright weird Collapsing Sun and the almost melancholy No One Can Hear You, where the background is ripe with sounds remniscient of a choir of tortured screams. Even though after repeated listens I consider the aforementioned trinity to be the definite high points of the album, the rest of the material is also strong. There's also a remix bonus from Wertham of When this No Longer Satisfies on the disc. It's a solid piece, but its most remarkable quality is its similarity to the rest of the cd's contents, up to the point where without it being stated in the track list, I would've never guessed the track was remixed by someone else than FITH himself.

There's no point in becoming an enemy of Fire in the Head over this cd. Instead, a better idea would be to toss the requested amount of cash at Michael for it and hope that the bucks go into providing us with another album like this, because Be My Enemy just happens to be that good.

From Vital Weekly:

From the noise department comes Fire In The Head, a project by Micheal Page, since early 2004. Page was a member of Slogun, when they played live but after a while he wanted to do his own thing, mixing noise, drones, dark ambient and power electronics. So far he has released ten CDs/CDRs, which I didn't hear. So it's not easy to relate the new work 'Be My Enemy' to that. Ten tracks are to be found here of not just the classical noise of banging some sheets of metal and feed that through a bunch of distortion, causing a storm of feedback. Fire In The Head uses synths, distortion, the usual power-noise vocal screaming, but there are also moments of relative tranquility, taking things a few steps back, such as 'Daddy's Got A Gun' (the whole thing with titles of course is the usual thing with the power noise musicians), which is a spooky affair. Influences by Whitehouse (or any copyist since them) are never far away, but Fire In The Head gives the material a strong twist of his own, and makes this into a more than nice disc of power noise.

From Industrial.org:

I am not sure if this project's logo is intended to be a hockey reference but as I wish to honour all Canadian cliches, I'll take this moment to note that the New York Rangers suck balls like a transvestite hooker $20 short for her next flap of smack. Go Canucks! That garbage out of the way, Fire In The Head are one of those acts for which I have been hearing positive things via that muttered secondhand voice one finds in Internet forums. Not to mention that in house staple Royce Icon has been wiping up endless drool from the material he's been sent so far. So the expectation level was up there when this disc of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers electronics showed up in my post office box recently. Well, let's check the score (when you stop groaning of course).

"Be My Enemy" has 10 tracks total with the run time about 45 minutes which shows some restraint plus makes for a tighter release I think. The material is firmly in the power electronics camp with its heavy use of vocals, feedback and distortion but absolutely from a contemporary vantage point: layers and depth as opposed to a raw, stripped down freak out. The immediate comparison for me would be Thomas Garrison's gift to the rest of us Control (from me a high compliment indeed) due to the frequency layout - it's like a circular saw has been taken to the spectrum with sharp bands of red light blasting through with each scathing pass of the blade. High end without being frustratingly piercing, dense without being dull.

If one was to call this release highly processed it would be akin to calling Hurricane Katrina a little windy. This sucker has been through sonic hell before it made it into the pits of this CD I would hazard, multi-band compression for sure as it extremely loud and as compact as a diamond's carbon. Distorted as all get out sure but in a positive way and any pumping from the extreme compression is more like the sound of loading a shotgun than a lap dog getting jiggy with your ear lobes. A tight reverb is wrapped around the entirety which makes for a very lively sounding recording which helps to unite the disparate mix of effects tweakage, mid range vocal spew and real world elements. By "real world" I am referring to the odd sound which appears to have been say a cymbal or drum hit before it was pushed face first into the effects grinder. Loops are used but rarely as a steady monotony. Instead, they are brought in momentarily to show off their gnashing inner workings before a swell of feedback blasts them to bits. When all these components hit at once, this disc is downright explosive.

One aspect that did surprise me here was how some of the blunter headstrokes get replaced by steady throbbing as the release progresses. By about half way this release starts sounding more like harsh ambient than caustic power electronics which admittedly shows some range but does change the timbre of "Be My Enemy" from purely manic to the ragged arc formed by a full revolution of the mood swing. For example, "No One Can Hear You"'s surface grit over despondent pad work is like a trail of tears left on the concrete as you are dragged across the basement floor. It's no goth like whimper but at times it it would be too dark for Slogun to venture in.

Whatever the path, this excellent release instantly winds me up. Think hair on end, fingers twitching, eyes on fire and a deep hunger for more. Absolutely recommended.

From Semtex Zine:

This is interesting. Fire In The Head is a project by Michael Page who appeared as a guest performer through the awesome power electronics unit Slogun. Michael decided to start his own harsh noise powerlectronics project under the name Fire In The Head. After releasing several demos and some releases on the Japanese Denshi Zatsuon, Nihilist Records and the legendary RRR Records. For me this is the first time I'm getting to know Fire In The Head with his latest effort "be my enemy".

What you hear is what you get. 10 tracks of dark distorted industrial feeled power electronics, with a harsh brutal death manner. Almost like a travelogue in to the mind of Michael Page, the first track "when this no longer satisfies" sets the mood for the entire cd, a dark breeding harsh composition with distorted mangled vocals. Shouting out his words on metalized distorted harsh power electronic sounds. This first track feels more like an opener for what still has to come.

"Daddy's got a gun" is one psychopatic trip of a disturbed head and mind, by which a story gets revealed on a densing floor of ambientesque noise. This one is pretty scary and makes me feel like psycho, like some frigging serial killer stuff. It's the longest track on here that makes it up to six minutes, while all the others clock out around four minutes. Up next is "prettier things" and it's good to hear Fire In The Head flaming up the heat with this track as this one is pure power electronics mixed up with distorted harsh sounding vocals. The whole thing is getting to collapse into a wall of straight on harsh noise brutality.

Throughout the ten songs you get on this cd by Fire In The Head I definitely can conclude that besides the sheer brutality Michael is aiming at he still manages to create a stable diversity throughout his power electronics/harsh noise. While "sometimes, just sometimes" has more of an ambient feel, and "submit/succumb" relays more on the vocals, I thought a track such as "fear becomes complacency" could be counted amongst my favorites here. Relaying on an ambientesque layers, creating a darkened blackened mangled landscape where primitive thoughts and lusts get in conflict with each other. A pretty dark soundtrack to your lonesome frightning nights.

With last three tracks closing off this "be my enemy" I can conclude that Fire In The Head delivered quite of an impressive disc here with dark industrialized harsh power electronics. Dark, blackened brutal and psycho. I can only think of stuff like Sickness, Slogun, Lockweld, RRR Records, Facialmess, The Grey Wolves and Freak Animal Friend Records and Japanese harsh noise as the main influence. Good stuff, and eventually you get what you want from Fire In The Head. Good stuff. Comes in a full colour slipcase.

From Auralpressure.com:

Fire in the Head is back!! I screamed this from the ninth floor of my des res council flat to the ants walking below and garnered not one look up in my direction. Total and abject apathy was shown. This is more likely down to the fact that I’m perceived / considered to be a person with extreme mental health problems who shouts a lot from skyscraper balcony’s and not down to the artist in question...the mighty Michael Page. He who has released copious recordings on cd and cdr format…I’ve just run out of fingers and am now onto my toes to keep count…and someone that I’ve reviewed in the past for this very site. Some of the reviews I think he may have liked. Hope so anyway. Feedback should be a two way thing. Builds a bond between reviewer and artist that lasts until the first shitty review. That bond won’t be broken, by me anyway, today. For Fire in the
Head is back!!! Note the extra exclamation for effect. Time to rejoice
once more.

People often wonder what purgatory is like. You’re dead and your poor soul is in temporary suffering until finally all sins are purged and you’re allowed to sit by the shoulder of God. Well I don’t know what it looks like but I bet it sounds like a lot like "Be My Enemy". The ten tracks on this latest excursion down old extreme power electronics way is everything you expect it to be. Perhaps even more so for this time Michael has nailed it sonically. Surging white noise riding the crest of the damnation wave. Electronic music as a form of aural torture. High decibel frequencies so intensified and dense that overload of the brain is inevitable. The screams of the artist mimicked by the listener as pain thresholds are stepped over and crushed. Respite from the assault ever so brief before recommencing with even more ferocity. The background ambience barely discernable above the unmitigated clamour. Music as punishment sternly doled out and gratefully accepted. A Pandora’s box for the unwary and ill informed. The sounds unleashed a squirming mass out of control causing chaos to all within its path.

This is the sound of Michael Page. Rage and despair brought kicking and squealing into your home. How it differs from his past efforts is a hard one to call. Think of "Be My Enemy" as a natural progression from the previous releases where everything that had gone before was merely building up to this release. Where the cumulative ideas finally merge together more coherently and cleanly making for an opus of grand intensity and design. Michael Page is back. Fire in the Head is back. Purgatory to delight the twisted corrupted sinning masses.

[Ray Kluze]

From Funprox.com:

45 minutes of ‘hostile noise’ released on F/T/H/’s own label. Again a loud and threatening mixture of power electronics and death ambient, this time with a bigger role for brutal vocals and evil sampled voices, a bit like NTT. There are even lyrics printed at Fire in the Head’s website. Of course don’t expect any romantic poetry. The first line is ‘You have no idea what I am capable of’, but I’m not sure if I want to know at all. I find “Be my Enemy” one of the most interesting releases of the American project so far, because of its greater variation in styles and sounds, instead of plain noise. The bigger vocal/textual aspects also help to give the music a deeper dimension. Favourite tracks: ‘When this no longer satisfies’ and ‘Submit/succumb’.

From Club Debil:

Auch die zweite CD von Michael Page aka Fire In The Head bewegt sch im gewohnten PowerNoise-Terrain. "Be My Enemy" kommt jedoch soundtechnisch ein ganzes Stück klarer daher als sein Vorgänger. Zum einen wirkt das Gehörte wesentlich kraftvoller - wahrscheinlich aufgrund eines verbesserten Mixings. Zum anderen haben auch Samples in das Programm Einzug gehalten. Zudem setzt Page seine Stimme etwas differenzierter ein: es wird nicht nur geschrieen, sondern auch (elektronisch verstärkt) geflüstert. Damit unterscheidet er sich ein wenig von anderen Genreprodukten, auch die bereits auf "Come Closer Cut Deeper" enthaltenen klaren Keyboardsounds Marke Ambient Drones sind auf dieser CD wieder zu hören. Besonders deutlich treten die bei Titel 7 "Fear becomes complacency " zu Tage. Ansonsten zwitschern wieder die kranken Sounds durch das Gehör, dass es eine wahre Freude ist. Dabei eignet sich das Ganze weniger zum "Tanzen" als zum "Faust in der Tasche ballen". Sicher; Michael Page hat das Genre nicht neu erfunden, doch immerhin ist er mit dem, was er tut, überzeugend.