From Absolute Zero Media:

Though there is nothing on the Eibon Records site saying this it out, I
received the new FITH CD and man am I glad I did. If you have ever read or heard about Fire in the Head, this is where Michael has moved to the big leagues. The production is huge and the it's not all layers and levels of harsh noise. Finally you can hear all the clear drones, noises, vocals, hisses, pops and epic dark ambient sounds all in one joyous release. Eibon Records seems to be picking up on the harsher side of the US noise scene with releases by Gruntsplatter, Control, NTT and now, FITH. I would love to see Fire in the Head see the success of Prurient, Emil, Sickness and NTT in the scene and with this release I think Michael may just receive it.

From Dagheisha.com (in Italian):

'I went out to the hazel wood, because a fire was in my head..'. Dopo anni passati a definire tendenze e scoprire band su band posso assolutamente affermare che sarebbe ormai impossibile per me stupirmi ancora di qualcosa. Troppo amore per questa forma d’arte viscida e sensuale chiamata musica che quando meno te lo aspetti è capace di lavare via i tuoi peccati e regalarti un’anima nuova per tutto il tempo che vuoi. Evidentemente questo è l’anno in cui l’industrial ha deciso di dare una vera e propria svolta alla propria immobilità visto che nel giro di poco più di un mese prima i norvegesi Miksha e poi il nuovo album di Michael Page hanno sconvolto le regole del genere con due dischi allucinanti.
‘Meditate/Mutilate’ rappresenta forse il punto di arrivo di un artista che dopo anni di collaborazioni oscure ha dato forma al suo progetto personale infondendo nella sua elettronica distorta tutto il male possibile generabile da principi noise, death industrial, dark ambient e big beat. Un’esplosione sonora senza precedenti che viaggia in parallelo con elementi lirici e tematici di chiara ispirazione violenta e minimale. Soffia ancora la rabbia iniziale di ‘Darkest Before Dawn’ che ‘True Believer’ e Kriegskunst’ dilaniano quanto rimasto ancora in piedi in un susseguirsi di passione e schiavismo nei confronti delle macchine potenti. Cera calda sulla mia schiena..

From Lunar Hypnosis:

Fire in the Head is a fairly new power noise/ambient/experimental project centered around the bands sole member Michael Page who has previously performed live with Slogun on a number of occasions. Inspired by this Page decided to start his own project, which since 2004 has had a number of releases mostly in CDr format.

When listening to this album I’m sometimes reminded of artists like Law or perhaps Navicon Torture Technologies, although it’s probably not as brutal as NTT. Page’s music is the type of power noise that starts out harmless and slowly builds to more calamitous proportions. Things may start out calm with droning ambient tendencies, but soon enough my ears are hit with a salvo of harsh noise, feedback, low rumbling, shrieks, industrial sounds, screaming, and well basically everything you’d expect from a band like this. While there really isn’t much of any rhythmic foundation to the
music the raw destructive power and darkness enclosed really manages to capture my attention for the full forty-forty minutes. I also like that not all the songs are explosions of violent noise and some are just more ambient noise type of stuff maybe comparable to Gruntsplatter.

Generally speaking ‘Meditate / Mutilate’ is a decent recording, but since this isn’t a genre I investigate that often it’s hard for me to put into full detail why I enjoy it. I can however say that if you like any sort of dark power noise or harsh industrial ambient music you’ll definitely have to check out Fire in the Head.

From Babylon Magazine:

"I went out to the hazel wood/Because a fire was in my head..." (William Butler Yeats) L'anticamera di questa dimensione cerebrale, è un artwork ostile, freddo come l'acciaio, devastante come fiamme... Un colpo sta per esploderti (d)alle tempie: maneggiare con cautela. Mauro e la sua KDM m'avvertono graficamente: non è quello che ti aspetti. Non può esserlo... E' molto peggio.
Infatti. Fire In The Head, ovvero Michael Page, ovvero agonia elettronica disturbata ed alienata, frequenze di silenzio ritratte da onde dark ambient, death industrial e noise. "Meditate/Mutilate", ovvero cacofonia acida e perversa, ovvero la rumoristica dell'assenza di consapevolezza d'un sè concreto, perdutosi nell'osservazione ossessiva dell'esterno muto, nell'ascolto ipnotizzante delle voci dell'interno. F/I/T/H, ovvero sperimentazione musicale dimentica di schemi e circolarità strutturali, ovvero avangardistico intento di rendere afona la realtà circostante, concentrandosi invece sull'assordante, incessante brusio ch'erroneamente crediamo taccia... Gl'ingranaggi del pensiero, catena di montaggio a ciclo continuo alimentata da psicotiche emozioni che stridono, urlano, sussurrano. Eternamente.

From Kronic.it:

Mutilazioni rumorose In poco più di due anni, FITH si è ritagliato uno spazio nel sottomondo noise con albums di sicuro impatto, passando con assoluta maestria da soluzioni più harsh noise a pulsante death industrial, senza abbandonare le voci di chiara fama power-electronics.

Il recente “Meditate/Mutilate” edito dalla Eibon non fa che consolidare questo esplosivo mix di sonorità industriali. Un album ben calibrato in tutte le sue differenti sfumature. Apre “Darkest Before Dawn”, una song analogica dove le modulazioni ambient noise raggiungono dei livelli ad alto tasso di abrasione cutanea, in “True Believer” FITH esplode in tutta la sua furia di violenza rumorosa con distorsioni e feedbacks, “Kriegskunst” è crudele nelle sue torbide atmosfere ambient noise con una sensazione di disagio provocata da un sound soffocato e lontano. “Complete the Obsession” si affida a loops profondi a basse frequenze dove fa capolino una voce narrante resa indemoniata da chili di filtri,
“Psychotic Underground” scorre su un denso tappeto di distorsioni su cui si poggiano ritmi più metallici. “Diluited” è un buon connubio tra
harsh noise ed industrial più classico, con distorsioni e feedbacks stop & go che lasciano improvvisamente spazio a ritmi meccanici e monolitici. La title track chiude con un colpo di scena, una loop di musica classica violentata da ripetute distorsioni roboanti con voci affilate e torturate, un epilogo di grande effetto.

Un progetto ancora recente in continua crescita ed evoluzione. Suggestivo il digipack infuocato sulle ombre della mente deviata.

From Vanishing Butterflies:

Sano patriottismo ? Cieca e vile autocelebrazione ? Niente di tutto
questo. Perché potrei parlarvi benissimo dei Rotten Matera del mio collega Dagh e fingermi di non vergognarvi di una delle tante ‘marchette’ a cui la stampa italiana e altri addetti ai lavori non farebbero nemmeno più caso tanti sono i casi di questo tipo che si ricordano nel passato recente e meno recente. In questo modo forse farei contento un amico ma commetterei lo ‘storico’ errore di penalizzare la band stessa concedendole il massimo dei voti per poi lasciarla nuda e indifesa al giudizio vero. Quello di chi sta leggendo in questo momento. Nel caso di questo folle promo autoprodotto il problema non si pone nemmeno perché basterà scaricarvi dal sito ufficiale le canzoni di cui sto per parlarvi e capire che dietro al
punka far west dei Rotten Matera c’è molto di più di quanto sembri. Echi repentini alla furia, all’auto-ironia ed al sadomasochismo in musica perpetuato dai System Of A Down attraversano ‘No Siga No Party’ e ‘Uno’ mentre la struttura di ‘Uno’ e ‘Surf Ritual’ si adatta maggiormente ai canoni dell’hardcore che conoscevamo prima che venisse deviato per salvare il metal americano in estinzione. Pochi secondi però perché improvvisamente i Rotten Matera virano verso ritmi sincopati, orizzonti sorprendentemente melodici e infine ancora violenza tout-core. Come al solito il limite tra genio e follia è alquanto labile e difficile da cogliere ma noi siamo qui per questo..

From Vital Weekly:

For one reason or another, unclear however to me, Fire In The Head, aka Micheal Page, got Nicholas Blinko to sing on one of the songs. Blinko, for those not old enough or from a different planet, was/is the singer of Rudimentary Peni, a UK punkband from years and years ago. Page himself has been Fire In The Head for some time and of his output so far I only heard 'Be My Enemy' (see Vital Weekly 505). 'Meditate/Mutilate' is not the album in which ambient industrial and noise are fighting battles. Fire In The Head still works much more in the realms of noise, than anything quiet or relaxing. As soon as the distortion pedal is down and something more 'quiet' may start, Fire In The Head is quickly there to make things dark
and unpleasant. This is not something for the weak of heart, both
musically and lyrically. But I must say that Fire In The Head's noise
music is not bad at all, really. Throughout these pieces there is enough variation, and not the usual half hour of howling feedback and crashing of metal sheets. His pieces might be raw, but he has put things together with great care.

From Funprox.com:

Italy’s Eibon Records has build up a good reputation as distributors of industrial noise, so this release can be seen as a form of recognition for Fire in the Head. Perhaps not surprising that both music and artwork occur to be more professional at first glance. For a change the album does not start with an overwhelming attack of noise, but with a good piece of hallucinatory death industrial/drone, called ‘Darkest before dawn’. The sound of shots and an angry speech form the start of ‘True believer’, which gets louder and denser as it evolves, with the screaming voice trying his best to be heard over the music. Then it’s time for another deep droning piece with industrial sounds, making me think of Megaptera, though the track ends raher noisy. The album continues in this vein, alternating powernoise and death ambient. “Meditate/Mutilate” is the most mature work of Fire in the Head so far. The tracks are built up in a subtler manner and the production is better so you can hear the individual sound elements better, without losing its uncomprimising nature. Listen for instance to a heavy piece like ‘Complete the obsession’.

From Obliveon Magazine:

Welch sinniger Albumtitel, denn zwischen dem meditativen und dem
selbstverstümmelnden Charakter dieses gut ünfundvierzigminütigem
Soundmassakers gibt es keinerlei musikalische Grauzonen. Ruhigen und düsteren, soundtrackartigen Sequenzen stehen härteste Industrialpassagen in der Tradition von Whitehouse gegenüber, die aufgrund dieser Dynamikwechsel noch viel krasser wirken, als sie in ihrer originären Struktur und Tendenz eigentlich sind. So verwundert es auch nicht, dass Protagonist Michael Page von „Bastardization“ und „Cannibalization“ spricht, um seine Musik, die im übrigen keinerlei Rhythmusstrukturen aufweist und über bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verzerrte Vocals verfügt, zu beschreiben. „Meditate / Mutilate“ ist ganz sicher kein einfach zu konsumierender Stoff und ein Frontalangriff aufs Gehör und das vegetative Nervensystem. Seid gewarnt ...

From Aural Pressure:

A new home… or possibly just a temporary move… for Michael Page and his FITH project sees our beloved instigator of aural disharmony on the Eibon Record label. A nice coup for the label and one that should put Michael under a bigger spotlight. Hey… the extra money won’t hurt either. Although I’m sure that a wad of dead presidents isn’t the biggest concern to him. Money is after all the root of all evil. But it does help to pay the bills and buy musical equipment. I’ll let him worry over these trivial matters. What concerns us, his followers, his fans, his obsessive band of warriors is whether or not he still retains the same stubborn streak in producing the musical equivalent of a carpet bombing over Vietnam.

"Meditate / Mutilate" (the title saying it all really) is 10 tracks worth
of music that introduces a slightly different twist to the FITH sound.
Gone are the old days of putting out a recording that hurt the ears from the first to the last minute. Mighty fine though those recordings were, and I’m not complaining, there was a limitation to what you can achieve using grunge vocals and power electronics…veering into extreme noise on occasions…that made it feel like eating a cheese burger every day for a year. Great if you love cheese burgers. Not so if you were a vegetarian. With "Meditate / Mutilate" Michael introduces a more varied sound that encapsulates part dark ambience, part experimental electronics along with the more familiar power elements. This makes for rounded and fuller release where the listener actually begins to enjoy, rather than endure, the music being played. For sure there are passages strongly reliant on the ability of the artist to batter the listener into submission, but for the most part he has reined in these tendencies and become ultra creative in his sound structures. The vocals are also far more varied, you can even make out a lot of the words being sung / spoken, and have a greater depth and intensity than ever before. Take all these parts, join them together, tighten it until the muscles stretch and the face reddens and you have "Meditate / Mutilate". A recording part hypnotic and part aurally destructive. A perfect combination that exceeded expectations on every level.

Is "Meditate / Mutilate" the best ever FITH release? A hard question to answer. Personally I think so. Not that I didn’t find any of his previous releases invigorating in one form or another, but with this release I can see it appealing to a broader audience who might have been mindful of his reputation. And any release that succeeds on that level has to be given the nod in that respect.

From www.chaindlk.com:

Started in 2004, Fire In The Head is the personal project of Michael Paige [sic] which has already released twelve CDs, counting this new one titled MEDITATE/MUTILATE. Focusing his sound mostly on industrial/power noise, Michael sees his project as a "cathartic outlet to explore and ratify the delusions and social perversions resultant of psychosis and the darker side of man's conflicted dual nature", as he says on his website. The ten tracks of the album fortunately don’t present a tedious wall of sound only but they merge elements of noise, death industrial, drone, dark ambient and power electronics without sticking only on one of these. So, if "True believer" or “Complete the obsession” remember early Whitehouse (see tracks like "My cock's on fire" or the "Peter Kurtin" album), "Kriegskunst"
is more de-structured (like digital noises on the wild), “Psychotic
underground” sounds like a noise version of Foetus and the closing
“Meditate/Mutilate” remember me the dark ambient tracks on Non mixed with feedback noises. For sure this kind of sounds don’t require to be a trained musician but Fire In The Head succeeds into creating a certain tense atmosphere that you’ll dig for sure if you are into this kind of sonority.

From Dead Angel:

The cult of F/I/T/H has been growing for a while now, thanks to noise guru Michael Page's dark vision and a steady series of releases elaborating on the more painful audio excesses of that bleak impulse to bum people out. Page is also the guiding hand behind Sky Burial (see the review of that band's new album later in the issue), and there are some similarities between the two, but F/I/T/H is far more visceral and violent, harsher and more punitive. The ten tracks on this disc are dominated by chaos and destruction, high-pitched wailing and dark, subterranean rumbling, along with an endless assortment of crunchy sounds. The tracks themselves are harsh, usually instrumental (although there is a guest vocalist on "Psychotic Underground"), and filled with jarring, unexpected sonic surprises and lots of bowel-scraping harsh noise (among other distorted
effects). Fans of MZ.412, Cold Electric Fire, and harsh but northodox
dark-ambient power electronics in general will want to pick up on this one.

Ffrom Sensorium.it:

Michael Page, aka Fire In The Head da circa un biennio, si accasa presso la nostrana Eibon al fine di dare alle stampe quella che rappresenta con tutta evidenza la sua migliore sortita discografica di sempre. Pur assestandosi stilisticamente nei morbosi ed usuali abissi industriali, la sua miscela vitriolica a base di power noise elettronico e dark ambient si caratterizza per un approccio di ampio respiro, tale da evitare il minimalismo ossessivo e le inevitabili ripetizioni di temi che affliggono, spesso e volentieri, le release del genere.

Merito degli arrangiamenti e di un lavoro particolarmente mirato sulle timbriche, che riescono a stagliarsi efficacemente in uno scenario torbido ed incubico, laddove tenebrosi crescendo a base di drones sono chiamati a convivere con virulente esplosioni di white noise. Tale connubio tra 'pieni' e 'vuoti' sonici rappresenta il punto di forza di un platter senza dubbio estremo e sconvolto (cfr. le filippiche urticanti in "True Believer" e "Kriegskunst") eppure subdolamente intrigante (come nelle abrasioni più controllate di "Darkest Before Dawn" e soprattutto della title-track, quanto mai perversa nel suo funereo sfondo orchestale).

L'assenza di basi ritmiche propriamente dette permette peraltro di
focalizzare al meglio l'attenzione sugli strati sonori assemblati da Page per l'occasione: puro rumore demoniaco e disturbante, in grado di destabilizzare più di un habitué.

From Musique Machine:

Meditate/ Mutilate seems to pull off perfectly the mix between of seething industrialised noise and more sinister creepy dark ambient tones. Even when your ears are been flayed by coarse electronics and ypu sit down and suffer pain vocal over load, rippling underneath is a sickly stream of grim ambience. Like maggot stenched water trickling under a site of a vast overkill.

Comparisons are difficult, maybe vocally a bit like a more demented
preacher version of Whitehouse, musically really a nod towards the
industrial and noise masters like Throbbing Gristle and Merzbow, but this seems to have a very fresh and sharp edge to it all. It never becomes structure-less noise or just walls of burning sound. There is always a repetitive rhythmic element or uncoiling drone pattern lurking from the first track, Darkest Before Dawn, with it’s sadistic brooding noise call, and dead light ambience. As the album progresses you feel like you've entered into some vast hellish world of broken machines tangled with twitching flesh, raving preachers stamping and shouting on fallen ones chests, there victims rib cages snapping. Screaming and billowing crowds of humanity, their blood dampened and burnt skin frames packed tightly together, their disappearing screams are feed though metallic juddering
contraptions to amplify and bend their pain. You're locked in this world right until the last track, Meditate/Mutilate with it’s sadly beautiful and violent mix of grating noise screams and looped string patterns, almost like some damning end credits music. The world you lived in for the 40 minutes or so is now dead, the preachers lay choked on their own decaying bibles, the crowd's dead, a mixture of saliva and blood dripping from their gaping mouth.

A trip to damnation and back that balances perfectly chaos and creeping ambience. This is one of quite a few Fire in the Head releases put out in the last few years and it’s certainly made me want to investigate further their other work.

Fron Radium Club:

Meditate/Mutilate, released on June 22nd, gives us prime condition Fire in the Head, who has moved musically into a new direction somewhere between his old harsh noise and the calmer drones of his other project Sky Burial. The new style is also a couple of orders of magnitude more psychedelic than FITH's previous output, and I wouldn't wonder if Meditate/Mutilate would find its way also into the record shelves of more drone oriented people despite its aggressivity compared to the usual ambient fare.

The album's material ranges between reverberating, metallic sounds and loud feedback. Its beginning is almost calm, the first track offering a deep, atmospheric soundtrack until the second track, True Believer, cuts into the soothing mass of sound with a series of gunshots. From there on, depth and complexity are the keywords.

Speaking of depth, Meditate/Mutilate's sound has enough of it to make more than one dark ambient artist go green with envy. The only thing missing is a complimentary huge PA to play this through. As a whole, this little gem strikes me as one of the weirdest discs released so far this year, because stylistically it just doesn't fit into any single category comfortably, being that it constantly shifts between bizarre art noise, power electronics and something-that's-like-ambient-but-isn't. There are times the pieces don't fit together perfectly, but those moments are so short that they don't detract anything from the experience.

Eibon Records deserves a big hand for once again choosing a fine addition to their outstanding discography. In short, Meditate/Mutilate is the right stuff.

From [audio]drome:

Così Micheal Page caratterizza Meditate/Mutilate, uscito per Eibon
Records. Niente ritmo, solo rumore, all’inizio strisciante e sotterraneo, poi saturo e insostenibile, infine di nuovo meno invasivo. Micheal è un trentottenne di Provincetown in Massachusetts, cresciuto col punk e innamoratosi dell’elettronica industriale. Il suo aspetto è quello di un punk, la descrizione e le foto delle sue esibizioni ne fanno un punk. Non è un caso dunque che su “Psychotic Underground” la voce sia quella (beffarda, assurda) di Nick Blinko dei Rudimentary Peni, il quale ha in comune con Mike l’attività come pittore. Si parte da questo, lo si traspone nel mondo degli SPK (progetto-ponte tra punk e industrial) o dei Whitehouse, si aggiunge la capacità di alternare le atmosfere di cui sopra, e si ottiene un disco capace di conquistare i più oltranzisti senza essere inaccessibile per gli altri. La fiamma del moniker brucia nella testa dell’autore e di chi ascolta, finché incenerisce tutta la frustrazione e tutta la rabbia. Una catarsi – invero più ragionata del solito - nel rumore, possibile grazie a tracce come “True Believer”, che inizia con le pallottole, sale subdola lungo la spina dorsale per poi far presa saldamente del cervello, in un crescendo abrasivo di suoni e grida. Testi (frammenti) disillusi e artwork calzante completano il quadro. Più che meritevole d’attenzione.