To many people the great names of the early UK Goth scene naturally constitute Bauhaus, Danse Society, Sex Gang, Specimen and similar suspects, but to those getting into things slightly later All About Eve would have been a natural favourite. A gritty live band; dark at the bottom, with a murky sense of energy, topped by Julianne’s soaring vocals, they were hinting at great things before the Big Time hit when their mutual admiration society with The Mission bore fruit. Then it all went pear-shaped with self-immolation, but the funny thing was that even when they were shite there was something charming about their oafishness, and when the final albums returned to a dignified stance, as things fell apart, they’d gone full circle and never shamed themselves overall. A nice collection of pictures fill the booklet, and it’s good to see both a credit for Jake, and bridge rebuilding as Tim Bricheno writes stirring sleeve notes, referring to “the sound of 3 people who dared to dream, just before they woke up to find the reality.”
The best known song, ‘Martha’s Whorehouse’ is a notable, blessed, omission on this compilation, (they could have included it as an extra, totally silent, track?) leaving you free to enjoy yourselves, and you’ll notice how, compared to the rest of the 80’s Goth fraternity, none had such commercial clout, or basic understanding of how good textures and straightforward song writing techniques could be wedded together. The songs are class.
It starts sublimely, all sparkly, rough and tough with the crouching ‘D For Desire’, before lolloping sideways in the slack ‘Don’t Follow Me’. ‘Suppertime’ remains my favourite, because it’s actually hard as fuck, imaginative and almost slickly constructed. ‘End Of The Day’ manages to do in a richly romantic fashion what ‘Don’t Follow Me’ doesn’t, in swooping down and lifting you up, involving you with the intriguing lyrics, as an agile bass creates friction with the radiant pick-up guitar styling. ‘Love Leads Nowhere’ is chirpy and impatient, dominated by the vocals as they all bustle happily along. Trios always have serious power when they get it right and these tracks show a truly energised beast, building up a head of steam, which begins boiling over during ‘In The Clouds’, complete with baby noise, and a warm melodic allure, and some big brave lashing of guitar syrup.
Then you follow them in their descent into madness and the sleeve gives away that ‘Appletree Man’ is a demo which means it can’t just have been a foolhardy error in the studio. The resection rest, m’lud! Hippy bastards that they’d become, they couldn’t shake off the energy or ability that they had deep inside, and ‘Shelter From The Rain’ is a fine construct where Tim even gets to overshadow Paul Kossoff with a truly epic display of emotional grandeur on guitar, as the song transfixes with the beauty of its mood, and lovely balance. ‘Every Angel’ sees the efficient machine rolling forward like a tank decked out in paisley camouflage nets, with some irritating percussion, as the slow ‘In The Meadow’ sidles by, waiting to be shot.
‘Our Summer’ is as boppy as it was soppy, with a divine sense of pop madness, set on cruise control and coming from total confidence. There’s also a thuddier extended version. ‘Lady Moonlight’ sounds like coy, tremulous nonsense, but makes for a pretty ballad before ‘Flowers In Our Hair’ arrives and no amount of faux Pistolian riffing is going to save them here, I’m afraid! “Where,” implores Julianne, “have the flowers gone, Sun Children?” (Sun Children: “Naff orf, missus!”) And what can you say? It’s funny, actually, because this perfectly emphasises just how daft they got at a certain point. The song bolts along quite nimbly, and you shriek with dementia as Julianne proudly claims, “we earn the flowers in our hair, my friend!”
‘Paradise’ was clearly something I’d erased from my memory banks on initial contact as I don’t recall this twittering hippy nirvana at all. It’s elegant, like a Kate Bush reject. Then the strangest cut of all, the inclusion of their cover of ‘Devil Woman’ but in truth the lyrics involved (“when you visit a new sweet lady”) exactly mirror some of the tripe Julianne came up with then. They still fill it with pretend vigour, and make it almost sound like ‘Eye Of The Tiger’.
An extended ‘Flowers In Our Hair’ and we’re done, and for all the small faults with looking back and seeing some mistakes they made, the fact they do lay them bare here, and we’ve all come to terms with them anyway, simply leaves you looking at a massive set of quality songs.
Even when they did some pukey things they would fit happily into a safe, harmonious Ethereal scene of today, even though they were Hippy-Folk back then. It’s the strength of the compositions which stop them becoming unwelcome guests on a album containing so many other striking songs, and even ‘Flowers’ and ‘Devil’ sound like tongue-in-cheek Punk entities now.
If you haven’t got many of their earlier records you need this, and if you’ve never really encountered them you’ll love it, because current bands move at such a slow pace. Back then the Eves came up with more good material in just a few years than most bands would love to achieve in a decade nowadays, and some of what is here you will find incredibly inspiring even though it’s twenty years old.
Now would you Adam ‘n’ Eve it?
D FOR DESIRE
DON’T FOLLOW ME (MARCH HARE)
SUPPERTIME
END OF THE DAY
LOVE LEADS NOWHERE
IN THE CLOUDS (FIRST VERSION)
APPLETREE MAN (DEMO)
SHELTER FROM THE RAIN (B-SIDE)
EVERY ANGEL (DEMO)
IN THE MEADOW (DEMO)
OUR SUMMER (SINGLE)
LAD MOONLIGHT (B-SIDE)
OUR SUMMER (EXTENDED MIX)
FLOWERS IN OUR HAIR (SINGLE)
PARADISE (B-SIDE)
DEVIL WOMAN (BOLLOCKSY B-SIDE)
FLOWERS IN OUR HAIR (EXTENDED
MIX)
ALL ABOUT EVE
CINEMASONIC (DVD)
- Filmed Live And Electric
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
Compared to the Return To Eden CD here you find the modern Eves, shorter haired and lean of thought, putting on a compelling performance, although lacking outright oomph too often.
It’s mainly mood, and ‘Let Me Go Home’ gets that going with small exultant pushes, ‘In The Clouds’ raises up a touch higher, and ‘Somebody Said’ provides real poise, which ‘Blue Sonic Boy’ and ‘Daisychains’ then dissipate. ‘I Don’t Know’ picks it up, and ‘Phased’ is magnificent. ‘Ctrl - Alt - Delete’ and ‘Sodium’ then continue to glow darkly and that’s the main meat of the set. You wonder if the new guitarist is a ZZ Top fan during ‘Make It Bleed’, and you’ll be cheered by the prettily maudlin cover of ‘Life On Mars’ because they do it with an easy grace with somebody like Suede couldn’t do if they’d tried for years. (Oh, they did!) ‘Our Summer’ lumbers lightly, and ‘Touched By Jesus’ drags on, but the gig overall is quality and quantity, so you’ll not feel disappointed.
The extras are a largely pointless gallery, the ‘Access All Areas’ soundcheck and gig footage which isn’t remotely enlightening, and there’s details of the website, magazine and other releases.
Neat enough, with some great material.
A Candytree Film Production
www.allabouteve.net
ALL LIVING FEAR
HOME TOO SOON (Fear
Productions)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
So Andy Racher returns, and ALF roll onwards, but while that might seem a fairly standard option for bands, there is something peculiar here. During his six year absence things have changed. Not rhythmically, as been noticed elsewhere, or the duo’s reliance of always keeping the songs full/busy, when some space would clearly benefit what are very well thought out songs, but somewhere along the lines, ALF have discovered maturity.
They must have, because this is a mature album. Despite lyrics from two sources, here we see a restrained but fulsome Racher delivery, and the music coalesces superbly. It's a mature All Living Fear, which is a scary thought. If they can upgrade the production standards and the programming, we could be finding something positively noble next time round.
The result of all this is the ease with which it comes across. ‘The Nearly Man’ could be rubbish, as a theme, like a finger-pointy ditty for some local character they didn’t like, but it almost becomes the dreaded fear some bands must feel, and there are many occasions here when they lyrics actually prick the musical surface and leave you queasy, alarmed or amused. And that is different. Something about ALF lyrics seemed flat before.
A similarly retrospective feels seeps through ‘Queen Of Delusion’, which turns out to be an amiable amble, musically, because there’s no out and out guitar attack, for all the standard UK Goth stylings. With the more Assured ideas comes far greater overall poise. Racher is able to focus sharply on melodic delivery and the old nasal characteristics have been smoothed out. The words really are shaper in intensity, and ‘Tug Of Love’ has an acidic sharpness, behind which the guitar sticks to sensible cyclical activity. Added to this is an off-kilter jauntiness which ensures you keep listening, if only to work out what they’re on about. Despite the drum machine the rhythms are subtler throughout, and enhance the mood Racher can now convey, and the build up, out of nowhere, of ‘Excuses’ is cleverly done; just disruptive enough, quietly loopy.
‘L’Enfant De Mort’ is a fairly standard offering and that doesn’t assist the lyrics in achieving impact, and ‘Insomnia’ all but sees the vocals trailing off, with slow Goth guitar splashes and a dampened bass keeping the mood going, but neither are in the same class as ‘D> D> N> X>’ with its cunningly conceived bizarre chorus, grimy tale and dual possibilities to the ending. Equally pretty but unsettling is the title track, which is a stately stroll, where the guitar saws sweetly, as the words get nasty again.
It ends peculiarly, as I feel it ought to, with what must be an old song, ‘Eternal Sin; the one song which suffers most from the production available to them, as this should have been gorgeous, but chokes slightly, and the guitar’s a bit squeaky. Then, ‘Forgive And Forget’ is plain Goth with a purpose, which you recognise from the past: and that’s what we have here - what they have become. They’re doing an older form, which no-one else in the UK does, without rockier bombast, and they have this experienced allure, which I’ll be honest about: I didn’t expect them to achieve. So as well as good songs to encounter, there’s trace elements of what they once were, meaning you can easily enjoy the best album they’ve ever done, but also find this the perfect starting point to delve backwards through their catalogue, to see how they got here.
It’s a winner.
THE NEARLY MAN
QUEEN OF DELUSION
TUG OF LOVE
EXCUSES
L’ENFANT DE MORT
INSOMNIA
D> D> N>X>
HOME TOO SOON
ETERNAL SIN
FORGIVE AND FORGET
http://www.alllivingfear.co.uk (includes some good, cheap CD-R items)
After the End
Making a Monster
~reviewed by Jezebel
I review packaging before I review music. Maybe because I am in advertising and marketing. Maybe because I like well put together packages (stop your smirking please). Maybe I believe that the cover of a book does say something about what is one the inside. I have found this to be about 65% to be true. And considering that is about five times more than the intelligence that the US gathers, I am going with it.
So – looking through the packaging, it does come up short. Just a card inside. Well done artwork though. Hmm….shoestring budget but with good talent for packaging. That is my summation on the CD.
The promo piece (that piece which is supposed to tell us about the band, etc) is just a postcard, if that, and tells me very little about the band. Except that it is not a “band,” but a one-man outfit. I am not against this concept. Hey – my dream date of Trent Reznor started out this way….and continues for the most part to do so…so although a little hesitant, I remind myself that it can be done and it can be done well.
The problem that I find with one-man band outfits is that there always seems to be something missing. I don’t know, may be the interaction with other people brings a different, unique and much needed depth and complexity to the music.
The card continues with the normal promo drivel (I manage a band and own a record label…I know it’s drivel. It says really nothing about the band, is just a thesaurus filled ranting and pushing of the band) but I find one thing interesting. Mark Bomhoff would like “honest reviews of the new CD.” Hey – this man is right up my alley, as I give nothing but honest ones.
Tracks 1 and 2, "Making a Monster" and "Cukoo Clock" are sweet melodic landscapes/atmospheric pieces that somehow combine sounds from Thriller by Michael Jackson, Backstreet’s Back by the Backstreet Boys, Nine Inch Nails and the Brickbats. Yeah, I really wrote that sentence. It’s not a band mix though, if not odd. But there is one very fundamental problem with both songs. They don’t “go” anywhere. They have gorgeous orchestral swirls, the raspy industrial voice, the spooky monster sound in the beginning and a bit of the electronica traipsing throughout…but it just doesn’t go anywhere for me. It is all on one level which is okay….but not how you want to open an album. From the title, this album is going to be about monsters, whether from a Freddie Kruger movie or from inside our souls…and I am not sure that these were the best two songs to open up and set up the album. I am NOT saying they are bad songs, but perhaps the wrong choices for the opening. Yes, they have what seems to be the pre-requisite Vincent Price organ playing, but again….oh you know…they don’t go anywhere.
Track 3, "Better Than Alone," starts with such an X-File sound at the very beginning that I am starting to think that Mark bought “1001 Spooky and Eerie Samples!” But that is okay, because as quickly as you hear it, it’s gone and it is replaced by a varied and lovely piano (okay keyboard made to sound like piano) melody interspersed by some great hard NIN sounding industrial sounds. This could actually get me out on the dance floor believe it or not. This may be something that combines the electronica which at one time was done with respect for musicality and musicianship, and industrial when that meant NIN. (yes, I am partial, shoot me…love NIN). Unlike the first two tracks, this has peaks and valleys, the voice although not as varied, actually gives the song more substance. I find that this, without being re-mixed, may just fill a floor in a club. It may be a little predictable, but that can sometimes be a good thing. Songs for filling floors are not supposed to challenge a person choreographically, but give them something that that a punter can dance to and enjoy without having to think too much.
"Killing Yourself" is an interesting piece as once again (this must have been why I requested to review this one), it has a NIN feel. I think the difference to this is there is a less hard edge to this sound that with my beloved Trent. This has more orchestration and, for lack of a better word, swirls. Its atmosphere is different. The lyrics may be just as angry and hate filled, but there is a slightly less resentful, dare I say, psychotic, feel to this. I believe that Mark is trying to tell us a story, not just with the lyrics, but with the sound that he creates. The haunted house which may be up the hill in the Vincent Price story or within the dark recesses of our minds.
Note to Mark: The sound bite from goodness knows where of the girl being killed or what have you, with her screaming, was unnecessary. You had/have a good song here, don’t screw it up with what seems like some kind of gimmick to take us back to the horror theme going through the album.
"Invention of Flesh"…..wow….play that keyboard boy!!!! Strong use here of the percussion machine and not badly done. It’s not the most innovative use, but it’s better than average. This comes right at you and demands you to listen and when you do, it sits back and explains the situation. I like that.
"Open Arms Empty" is the required love song on every hate album. Should have known it was to be that when I saw the title. Well done and it makes me wonder if Mark’s first instrument was piano. Simple, but complex…it gives a first base and support. But, saying that, I would have preferred that on the production side, more emphasis was given to Mark’s voice and to the cashmere of it. It, I believe, has the capacity to be more than what he showcases it as…and if perhaps (and this goes back to the whole theory of the pitfalls of one-man bands) someone else had been there, they would have perhaps suggested that the orchestration, etc be taken down and his voice carry the music instead of vice versa. I think it would have made an even better break in the flow of the album.
"Someone Else" unfortunately is a bit too generic to make me care more about it than, yep, it’s okay. Won’t fill a floor, good for me folding clothes with a bounce in my step. But nothing more. There is a bit more playing with the voice (was that an attempt an industrial rapping?) If personified, it’s one of those kids in my dance classes that can do it all average. The turns are landed, the leaps have pointed toes, but there is nothing special and although great if I am doing a chorus large number because of dependability, the large roles would go somewhere else.
"This is How It Ends" is the second love/hate/death/goodbye song on the album. But this has got the beat for the dance floor and for the glow sticks. Unfortunately, this may have crossed the line over to the glowstick range. That…well…I don’t know. I am torn. There is a great feel of old OMD there, and NIN, but there is some really crap overtones of EBM which turns me off. I understand the inclination of artists to throw a little EBM into their sounds these days in order to try to get a larger audience. I don’t agree with it, but I do understand it. Just a little hint to Mark and to other artists…it actually demeans the rest of the work that you do, at least in my eyes. And another thing…Cyber Dog here in London is closing. The largest place to get cyber clothing is closing (and I will dance a jig of glee)…cyber/EBM is dying…don’t get dragged down into the coffin. Stay true to the sound you love and feel.
I generally don’t review the remixes on an album, but as I had a little time and my wine glass was still half full, I decided to give a listen.
Why do I not give them a listen? Because, in my opinion, 8 times out of 10, they are horrible. My opinion is, especially if the artist themselves do the remix, is if the song would have sounded better with the remix, why was it not done that way in the first place? My all-time favourite song is Sin. Mid-conversation, I have run off to the dance floor to dance to it. I turn into a dance maniac. But then, it is the remix. And I walk off dejected. The original rocked. The remix makes more of the nothing part of the song. It stinks.
I listened to the first two and shrugged and drank some wine. And then I heard the remix of "Open Arms Empty" and I almost spit my wine across the room. Why? Why the hell do you take a really good song and turn it upside down and make it from something that expressed pain and sorry and hurt and make it to a “throw your glowsticks in the air” piece of trite. If it had done by someone that had not made the album, had not written and poured themselves into the lyrics of the song, I would have been angry…but this makes me irate. What Mark has done is demean the actual heart and soul of that piece and made it into some kind of floor filler. It makes it comical, silly and really ridiculous. I (forgive me, I am an old woman with old ideas) thought that the words from musicians came, for the most part, from their heart, their soul. I find it hard to believe that Mark was bouncing around as he realised the hell of pain he was in. Hey – maybe it’s me. Haven’t had a break-up in ages…maybe it’s the new way of dealing with it. Write a beautiful from the heart song and then fuck it up by giving it a great back beat.
Must say…I turned the CD off then. Only one track left, so I don’t think I have gypped you out of much. It was/is a remix anyway.
Wait….one second….what is this…track 13…it’s "This Is How It Ends"…and it’s the way that it should have been done. Beautiful vocals leading gorgeous orchestration. Even the little whispers give the sinister tone that I think was desired. Oddly, it reminds me of some Erasure tunes. Sometimes…and a couple of others. There is a reliance on the vocal, the lyric. This is what should have been included in the first place. This is beauty.
My assessment? My summation? I am pushing the annoyance of that track 12 aside.
Mark has a good talent, a good sound and a generally good feel for his music and sound (see, I am diplomatic!). What he needs is someone to come in and work with him. Some one who can help him see different dimensions in his music. Someone to remind him he has a lovely voice. And someone to tell him when to leave a bloody good song alone!!!!!
After the End is Mark Bomoff
Track Listing:
1. Making a Monster
2. Cukoo Clock
3. Better Than Alone
4. Killing Yourself
5. Invention of Flesh
6. Open Arms Empty
7. Someone Else
8. This is How It Ends
9. Cukoo Clock (groove asylum
remix)
10. Making a Monster (high
voltage remix)
11. Open Arms Empty (pressure
sequence remix)
12. Someone Else (symphony
of horror remix)
13. This Is How It Ends
(tears in the sand remix)
Distributed by Dekonstruktion
Records
Dekonrec.tripod.com
After The End
Website: afterthehead.com
Akercocke
Choronzon
~reviewed by Eric
Rasmussen
Akercocke singularly embodies the side of metal that I despise, and yet I cannot stop listening to their new CD. Is my will subverted by the band's ritual magic? Has my taste become so thoroughly jaded that, like the wanton alcoholic who eventually gets drunk on smaller qualities of drink, I now require less to interest me? Akercocke falls prey to the usual metal trappings. Their liner notes offer an abundance of scantily dressed women, their album covers pair Satanic imagery with women's breasts and butts, and their "evil" lyrics are delivered by a combination of belching and rasping.
Under normal circumstances I would find each of these qualities offensive, or at least mildly irritating. Yet Akercocke presents them not without a sense of self-parody, or at least self-awareness. Their singer may attempt to sound evil by vocalizing an inhumanly low belch, but it is used as an effect, not a convention. The band's image and lyrics at first appear typically "metal" in the way that gives metal a bad name, although the band members wear suits and ride horses or hang out around fancy cars. Akercocke writes heavily Satanic lyrics and is openly Satanist (that is, they do not in fact believe in Satan), yet the band members are, reportedly, very upright, proper gentlemen.
Akercocke's compelling atmospheres are crafted with the usual elements: blast beat drumming with catchy fills, heavy distorted riffs, squiggly solos, moody ambient power chords, black metal rasps, death metal growls, dramatic clean singing, etc. The songs can be divided into "short and mood setting," or "long and diverse." The shorter songs break up any possible monotony, and add in some ambience and dramatic flair to fill in the blank spaces between the heavier epic tracks. Akercocke's real brilliance, however, becomes clear in their longer songs, which derogate from generi-metal by progressing through a variety of moods.
These songs build and fall, showing the band in top form as every member contributes some aspect to the overall sound. In "Scapegoat", the driving intro riff hits full force with the growling vocals and blast beat drums, but when the song segues into catchy beats that sound almost electronic, the guitar slows down and feels bouncier, while the vocals are sung cleanly but distorted electronically. If you're a fan of extreme music, you absolutely have to check out Choronzon. And if you're in the camp of self-proclaimed "intelligent" metal listeners that typically avoid CDs with nude women on the covers, or cheesily Satanic song names and lyrics, you might just be surprised by Akercocke's special brand of virtuosity.
Track List:
1) Praise the Name of Satan
2) Prince of the North
3) Leviathan
4) Enraptured by Evil
5) Choronzon
6) Valley of the Crucified
7) Bathykolpian Avatar
8) Upon Coriaceous Wings
9) Scapegoat
10) Son of the Morning
11) Becoming the Adversary
12) Goddess Flesh
Akercocke is:
Jason Mendonca
Paul Scanlan
Peter Theobalds
David Gray
Akercocke - Official Site:
http://www.akercocke.com/
Earache Records:
http://www.earache.com/
Apostasy
Cell 666
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
Hey, look! It's totally derivative symphonic black metal with bad production and not a shred of originality! You don't see that every day... unless you're a music reviewer. Like me. Ah well. I'm really being a bit too harsh on Apostasy. Their debut album, Cell 666, covers a familiar style with a very slight twist. Doesn't almost every band do that these days, though? I guess it puts food on the table and buys kindling for the churches.
Since every other reviewer on the web has said Apostasy sounds like a mix of Dimmu Borgir and Arcturus, I'll bow to peer pressure and do the same. It helps that the statement is mostly true. Apostasy has a long way to go to surmount the artistic peaks Arcturus has scaled, but familiar trappings are in place. Evil circus keyboards and eerie atmospheres abound. Piano interludes pepper the album, which otherwise relies on Dimmu-esque bombastic guitar'n'rasp to fill time. This would all be well and good (or at least perhaps minorly interesting) if the guy who mixed the damn thing hadn't been waaaaay too fond of the low end of the frequency spectrum. Virtually every musical moment worth listening to has been drowned in an omnipresent wash of bass.
Apostasy's vocalist sounds like he was locked out of the recording booth and is rasping out in the hall while the drummer, bassist, and rhythm guitarist pound out thick, relentless 16th notes. Sadly, the lead guitarist must have been having a smoke with the rasper when they lost the key, since he's barely audible as well. In case I'm being unclear, the production is dull and muddy and utterly overwhelmed by bass. It's almost as if the band was embarrassed and didn't want anyone to realize they're actually pretty good musicians. With better mixing, this album would have been much more enjoyable. When all your best riffs, neatest keyboard passages, and craziest solos are drowned by the bass/drum/rhythm guitars going DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUN, you know it's time to find someone who knows what they're doing to produce your albums.
I think these guys can do better... but it is their debut, after all. They show several times on Cell 666 that they are capable of writing kickass riffs, and even pull off some interesting keyboard / guitar solo gymnastics. The production, though, ruins the whole experience for me - to the point that I really can't give this too strong a recommendation. Topped off with the general lack of originality, it makes Apostasy a band to look for in the future, but set aside for now until they mature.
Track List:
01.) Crowned In Thorns
02.) Infernal Majesty
03.) Cell 666
04.) Icon
05.) 7th Throne
06.) Beneath the Lies of
Prophecy
07.) Reign of Chaos
08.) Beauty of Death
09.) Metempsychosis
Apostasy is:
I hate it when record labels
don't care enough about their artists to provide even rudimentary information
about a band on their website... information like -who is in the band-!
Black Mark Records gets a black mark from me for their crappy website and
lack of artist info. Hire a real web-designer, Black Mark. They practically
grow on trees these days. For now, Apostasy shall have to remain unnamed,
as they also do not appear to have a website of their own with a band list.
Black Mark Records:
http://www.blackmark.net
The End Records (US Distribution):
http://www.theendrecords.com
Arachnes
Primary Fear
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
My primary fear before reviewing Primary Fear was that I had been saddled with another in a long line of YAPMAs. If you don't know what a YAPMA is, you haven't read many of my reviews. For the unenlightened, it's a nice timesaving acronym for Yet Another Power Metal Album. Which is sort of odd since I have to explain it every single time I use it and therefore have defeated the purpose of creating it in the first place. Wait - wasn't I supposed to be reviewing something? Yes! Arachnes's Primary Fear, in fact. Well, it's not a YAPMA after all. What it IS, is an album that is generic, exciting, derivative, propulsive, and other perplexing things. Oh - and it's good, too. Really good, in fact.
Enzo Caruso, Arachnes's lead vocalist, wins the annual 'Michael Kiske Soundalike' award for 2004. Even so early in the year, it is clear he's the man to beat. He sounds almost exactly like the Helloween-y legend, but with a slight Italian accent. He has a all the patented vocal mannerisms down- the warble, the bouncy pitch shifts, the ebullience. Slapping that voice over musical arrangements that also hearken back to the glory days of Helloween makes about half of Primary Fear sound like a vintage blast out of a wrinkle in time. Sadly, the production also sounds as if it was from the days of yore, giving the whole album a muffled quality that often obscures some fine powermetal. I'll overlook that, though, since this album brings back good memories of better days and manages to break the chains of derivation enough to secure Arachnes their own identity... sort of.
This could have been an old Helloween album, but for some important differences. The first, and least consequential, are the prog-ish keyboards liberally slathered all over the music. I don't think they even -had- keyboards back in the last century when Helloween reigned supreme. Arachnes also lacks some of the more rockin' drive that pervaded ancient Hell-o-tracks like 'Judas' or 'Savage' and tend more toward modern symphonic excess... which turns out to be their greatest strength. Primary Fear features quite a few lengthy instrumentals, including one monumentally cool extended church-organ solo. The instrumental passages are very engaging, and are quite well performed, adding a neoclassical contrast to the happy Helloweeny songs that make up the rest of the album.
None of this (other than the church organ) sounds particularly new, or original, or innovative. It did hold my attention, though, and captured my imagination far more completely than the typical power-poseurs that clog up my mailbox every month. If the production had been clearer, letting the vocals and leads shine through like they deserved to, I'd probably be hailing this album as a grand display of all the conventions of modern powermetal. As it stands, the music will still enthrall you even if you're burned out on the standard symphonic powermetal approach. The excellent instrumental passages alone will make it worth your while to pick up this disc. And if you're -not- burned out on powermetal, and actively enjoy the genre, you have nothing to be afraid of: Arachnes's Primary Fear will not disappoint.
Track List:
01.) Osonzes
02.) Battle To The Victory
03.) Primary Fear
04.) The Warning
05.) Still Waters
06.) Thriller
07.) To Escape Death
08.) Not Fair (Prelude)
09.) Not Fair
10.) Tota Pulchra
11.) My Old Refuge
12.) My Son and I
13.) Running In The Labyrinth
14.) Eruption
15.) Scherzo in E Mino
Arachnes is:
Franco Caruso - Guitars,
bass guitar, backing vocals
Enzo Caruso - Lead vocals,
keyboards, Hammond, Korg synthesizer, piano, harpsichord, backing vocals
Paolo Giani - Bass and backing
vocals
Jaco - Drums and timpani
Arachnes Official Website:
http://www.arachnes.it/
Scarlet Records:
http://www.scarletrecords.it/
The End Records (US Distribution):
http://www.theendrecords.com
Autumnblaze
The Mute Sessions
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
Autumnblaze's press materials describe their music as 'melancholic trip rock', which seems fitting enough. I'd never heard them before listening to The Mute Sessions, which is a set of acoustic recordings of songs from their previous plugged-in albums. I'm a bit ill equipped to discuss this style of music in much detail, since I'm typically bombarding my senses with ear shredding extreme metal of one variety or another, but hey, I'll give it my best shot here. I'm a professional. Kind of.
The arrangements on The Mute Sessions are romantically expressive, filled with longing and, yes, melancholy... but Markus B.'s vocals are too energetic to seem especially depressed or gloomy. Instead, they have a passionately wistful quality, if you can imagine that. The guitar work captures the same mood. Minor key progressions dominate the album, but the brisk tempo throughout evokes a sort of restless determination to overcome all the things that would sadden lesser bands into a gothic doomfest. The compositions themselves have a darkly progressive flair to them... all these damn hybrid bands. I run out of descriptive adjectives by the second paragraph these days just from trying to peg down what they sound like.
Since they're featured so prominently, it's only right to discuss the guitarists and their contribution to the album. The guitars sound fantastic- resonant, clear, deep, full and bright. The sound quality matches the typically lofty standard I've come to expect from Prophecy releases. Markus B. and Joey Siedl may not be Al Di Meola and Paco de Lucia, but they are capable guitarists. Their arrangements aren't especially daunting in a technical sense, but they are emotionally played and never bog down in repetition. The terrific production values and lyrically expressive guitar playing make The Mute Sessions a very pleasant listen.
I can't say how the renditions of the songs on The Mute Sessions stack up to their electrified predecessors, but I imagine that they went over quite well with audiences that heard them in intimate clubs on the band's last tour. Similarly, they should please anyone who likes passionate, driving acoustic rock with a tinge of darkness. It's hard to be full of vigor and melancholy at the same time, but Autumnblaze manage to do just that. If this kind of music is what lights your fire, break out some scented candles, dim the lights, and let Autumnblaze sweep you into their dark embrace.
Track List:
01.) kiss my fear away
02.) i shiver
03.) the nature of music
04.) bleak
05.) it never felt like
this before
06.) the wind and the broken
girl
07.) can't save anyone
08.) scared
09.) so close yet so far
Autumnblaze is:
Markus B. - vocals &
guitar
Joey Siedl - guitar
Mike M. - drums
Carsten Pinkle - bass
Autumnblaze Official Website:
http://www.autumnblaze.de/
Prophecy Productions:
http://www.prophecy.cd/
Butterfly Messiah
Eternal
~reviewed by Matthew
Heilman
As both a critic and a music fan, I personally have never been very impressed by Synth Pop or EBM. It is not that I dislike the sound of this music - quite the contrary. There are actually a number of EBM projects that I am very fond of and in certain moods, I want to listen to nothing but electro or early Industrial dance music. Regardless of how passé it may be, I still think that the initial releases by Covenant, A23, and VNV Nation were genius and at the time, extremely monumental. The problem I have always had with this style is that so many projects unashamedly rode the coattails of the aforementioned bands’ successes, plagiarized the basic elements of their sounds, unforgivably diluted the power and potential of the style with trite songwriting and arrangements, and most of all, many mistakenly brought their synthetic music to the stage under the pretense of a live performance. I could go on, but then it would seem as though I am still bitter about the way the scene has changed so drastically over the years. I willingly detached myself from it all, and I continue to find music that is more suited to my interests and tastes. And I feel all the better for it. And for those that enjoy these things, more power to them – I honestly try not to be condescending about it. I am the minority, and I am fine with that. I just don’t want to be a part of it. If I never purchased another new future pop or electro record, I don’t feel my music collection would be lacking anything significant.
I preface this review with perhaps an unnecessary glimpse into my own personal tastes only so that the reader can better understand the ‘impact’ of my praise for this album. As with all things, there are exceptions. Butterfly Messiah has been one of those exceptions for me for a number of years now. They have developed from a murky Darkwave project that achieved great success on Mp3.com into a full-fledged dark Synth Pop act in the vein of Die Form and Attrition. Since the first time I heard them, I recognized the band’s sincerity. Like any band, they hoped for success and to a certain degree, I suspect that they wanted to be embraced by the thriving dark music community and therefore they began to accentuate the dance-driven elements of their material. But above all things, Butterfly Messiah demonstrated an unfaltering allegiance to dark atmospherics and somber moods, and lyrically explored themes dealing with the occult, magick, and mythology – topics that from my observations are usually far too ‘clichéd’ and ‘pretentious’ to be immediately accepted into the glow-stick illuminated weekend underworld of ‘sophisticated’ Cybergoths. Nonetheless, I believe that Butterfly Messiah’s latest material has come closer to perfecting a formula of music that appeals to purist fucks like myself but I suspect that it will also impress neo-Goth audiences the world over. Success, I believe, should be inevitable.
Eternal is this Florida band’s second full-length release, and compared to the preceding EP Synthesis and the full-length Priestess, there is a greater emphasis on the band’s rhythmic and melodic strengths. Considering the primarily organic elements of the music I have enjoyed so enthusiastically lately, I wasn’t exactly primed for this release. I expected to have to listen to it a few times, to ease into it and get used to the absence of jagged guitars and frantic drum passages. But immediately after “For Today” began, the disc’s opening cut, I was captivated. I could feel myself melting into the song, wading out into the music blindly and openly, without the slightest bit of resistance. It’s a cold sweetly melancholic song, with lush layers of swelling synths buoying along ghost-like atop understated Electronica. Shannon’s fragile voice appears, delicate and laden with emotion; her expressive talents are instantly showcased in the song’s poignant vocal melodies, carrying through the verses and the chorus. What’s funny I suppose to me is that I am still on my PJ Harvey / Jarboe / Diamanda Galas kick and I haven’t had much patience for softer female vocals these days. Too many misguided Goth Metal bands have ruined my love of feminine soprano grace. But whatever once stirred my emotions before Liv Kristeen unwittingly inspired a horde of whiney off-key sirens has been stirred yet again here. It sounds so ridiculously sentimental but this song honestly made me feel deeply reflective, beautifully saddened, and happy to be alive.
And that seems to be the primary theme running through this new release, which the band suggests is best experienced while reading the lyrics and listened to “in the company of loved ones” whom they stress we must “cherish.” There seems to be a sincere ‘carpe diem’ message throughout this disc, stressing the importance of living each day with a sense of determination, appreciating the simple things and attempting to better your circumstances through your own intuitive abilities, so that when the inevitable occurs, when the grave yawns to enfold you and bring your days to an end, your last thought could be confident vow that your “days were never ever left unlived.” We are in charge of our own destinies; we make or break ourselves, we have only ourselves to blame for our successes and our failures. Rather than wallowing in self-pity and misanthropic disdain, Butterfly Messiah seeks to show the light to be found in darkness. “And today, I died to find myself quite alive / And today there’s nothing like the bliss I feel inside.” This way of perceiving the world we live in, is very much in line with the personal thoughts that have preoccupied my mind quite a bit lately as I prepare for graduate school, lament the loss of past loves and look forward to the life I could have, yet goddamn am I afraid of failing. This disc speaks to me on a level few discs have as of late. It was as much a surprise to me as it will probably be to you.
So yes. Anyway. The rest of the CD. “The Circle” appears second on the disc and we wade out further into aural darkness, less sweet and more menacing, the song is seasoned with striking bits of buzzing cacophonic synths, colder, more ghostly vocals and a harder rhythm. I can’t help but think of Die Form, simply because there are like, half a dozen other bands that sound like this it seems. Next up is “It’s Time,” the track that succeeded in bringing attention to the band in clubs around the States (and a song that I was always very eager and excited to include in my DJ sets). The version that appears on this disc is the original version. Some of you hopefully will have had the pleasure of hearing the harder “Post Kronos Dance” mix of the track. I suppose my first criticism here is the band should have opted to include that mix instead since it hits much harder. Regardless, it’s still a powerful driving track, the verses blackened by a stark harshness while the uplifting chorus rises to a more ethereal yet climactic pitch. Honestly, one of the most satisfying Darkwave/Electro club hits out there.
The title track is faintly graced with a retro feel, but it’s Shannon’s pleading and slightly more throaty vocal performance that elevates the track to excellence. “With Roses” features Robert Davis’ vocals, which volley between a dark spoken monotone and a soft singing voice. A similar retro feel can be detected here as well, a ballad slightly in the (Depeche) Mode of things. Though far from awful, it just doesn’t stand out as gracefully as other tracks. “Virtual” is also kind of a low point in my opinion – the song bounces along, a little too formulaic and without any real strong melodies to set it apart from other acts. I don’t care much for the staccato synth blips that hop on top of the track. Overall, it just pales in comparison to the other offerings on “Eternal.”
“Grey” breaks the slight lull in excitement. Also sporting a kind of retro feel, it is another slower track with some nice piano passages, the drum patterns sounding like something from DM, 242 or even the Pet Shop Boys. It works very well whatever the case. Shannon sounds suitably moody, not quite as commanding as on other tracks, but still her voice ices the song wonderfully. A fuller more intensified track follows in the way of “Ascension,” a driving beat propels the song beneath Shannon’s disembodied chants and a swirling synthetic orchestra of icy strings and choir samples. Creeping into a chilling operatic pre-chorus, the song breaks down somewhat unexpectedly for a more shuffling swayable rhythm for its chorus, where the listener is treated by ominous spoken word harmonies between both Shannon and Robert. Definitely one of the album’s dynamic highlights.
I have never been one for lighter, mostly instrumental or ethereal interludes. However, “Believe” is a rare exception when synths and a female voice are adequate enough to really drive a message home. The song is a bit on the soft and rosy side, but it still conveys a strong sense of emotion, with yet another great vocal melody, and a good pairing of understated electro synth voices and organic orchestral string passages. The band continues to tread on ‘dangerous’ ground with “Falling Stars,” a song which features a chorus urging it’s protagonist to “look into my heart and you’ll see staa—arrs…falling staarrrs.” It sounds like it would be a bad Switchblade Symphony song. And even somewhat reminds me of that band. But somehow, some way, Butterfly Messiah has managed to make something that more than likely would have ended up sounding unforgivably sappy in the hands of a lesser band – and made it perhaps my favourite song on the disc. Go figure. Musically, it’s a big song, sweeping and majestic, with a jagged rhythm that slithers between more fluid, driving yet achingly moody passages. The song is an atmospheric triumph.
“Aeon” is also quite cool, being a strongly rhythmic track that retains a graceful hypnotism, a nice entrancing electro vibe that builds from a tighter restrained groove into a freer, calculated march. As the album reaches its close on “Counterstrike,” the band has definitely not run out of creative steam. A sampled siren rings out eerily and charges into a high-energy thud, webbed by choppy operatic vocals (think “Carmina Burana”) pausing for a bit of energized spookiness. Truthfully the song is somewhat fragmented, the potential drive and dance floor rioting is partially interrupted by these breaks. But in the privacy of your own home or your car or wherever else you should be listening to music, it works wonderfully and may be one of the album’s most urgent tracks. Shannon’s vocals are layered very well, but mixed with a slight detachment, creating a more distanced and wonderfully haunting effect. “Eternal” definitely winds down on a very high and pleasing note.
Ultimately, this is a fantastic sophomore release from Butterfly Messiah. I could not have expected more, and they in no way failed to meet my lofty expectations for their continued development as a force to be reckoned with in the dark music world. My only real critique of this disc is a technical one, as I felt that the mix was a tad bit thin and the album’s power could have achieved a greater, more direct impact if the drum sequences were mixed with a bit more depth and punch. Many songs could have hit harder. But in terms of their orchestration and the songs themselves, they are top notch. Shannon’s vocals do seem thin as well at times, but it does not seem to be her voice that is flawed. She hits the notes, but at times, she seems a little restrained. I wouldn’t doubt that the band would correct these small shortcomings with their next release if they continue to develop in a similar direction. Overall the disc is very satisfying and will hopefully make its way into the dark music collections of DJs and music fans around the globe. Like all Fossil Dungeon releases, Eternal is exquisitely packaged, with great care and proper Gothic elegance displayed on the album’s lugubrious cover art as well as with the stark black and white photography inserted throughout the booklet. I highly recommend this disc, and though I am still very much enjoying this new material, I am excited to see what the band will achieve with future releases. Do not delay in your purchase of this fine release.
Tracks:
1.) For Today
2.) The Circle
3.) It’s Time
4.) Eternal
5.) With Roses
6.) Virtual
7.) Grey
8.) Ascension
9.) Believe
10.) Falling Stars
11.) Aeon
12.) Counterstrike
Butterfly Messiah is:
Shannon Lyn Garson – vocals,
keys
Robert Davis – backing vocals,
synths, sequencing, percussion
Joshua Harrington – keys/synths,
sequencing, percussion
Butterfly Messiah – Official
Site:
http://www.butterflymessiah.com
The Fossil Dungeon:
http://www.fossildungeon.com
BOUDOIR
CURRENCY OF THE SOUL
(Pandaimonium)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
Something about this appealed to me from the word go, and although it was mainly the name and that one track was called ‘Disfigured And Forgotten’, there was also the lovely red sleeve to consider, and the prospect of finding the press release was accurate and that here would be a beautiful voice decorating hypnotic works of lust, sorrow, longing and beauty. The usual lush ethereal sounds, put to a more cohesive melodic form, in other words.
The Cocteaus started all this, and Deadcandance raised it to a noticeable artform by making it more comprehensible, at which point virtually anybody who didn’t want a noisy band then created ‘artistic’ ones instead. This had led to the lows of the Shoegazing movement which was inescapably dreary, and the Ethereal/Heavenly Voices approach which often fails to connect lyrically, on any level, but provides precisely the right kind of musical fragrance for even the grubbiest of surroundings. Boudoir come into that lithe category and acquit themselves really very well, because so many of these bands leave no traces, in that you can’t recall too much no matter how many times you listen, but just sink back into their warm musical bath again when it’s on. Boudoir may not be onto the giddy heights of Black Tape For A Blue Girl, but they do have a sense of power about them.
The tracks don’t need much introduction, being elegant and very precise, with the vocals all floaty and emotive. They have drums bashing away with great vigour, and synths flooding all exits. It’s quite overpowering, and frequently cuts back to lighter moments, ensuring you’re pulled slightly this way or that. Then they get rousing again. Repeat, and dwindle….
Introduce a bit of Middle-Eastern mystery early on, without it having any real point, and you’re into the modern moves. What lyrics there are convey precisely zero because they’re trapped in the exquisite ether, and I doubt they’d mean much anyway because the vocals suggest no great urgency: this is sensurround cotton wool. During the final phase of ‘Maybe Yesterday’ some guitar prepares to become quite unruly, but somehow forgets its direction and all is harmoniously sculptured, but the way they raise the volume and the stakes makes for a spectacular success.
With ‘Last Try’ they remind you of a fruity Sundays, which is a noble comparison. Very chirpy, mordant and bobbling along with chilly splendour. ‘Sweet Storm’ is perfectly named, but Disfigured’ is cyclical, phased, twittering mush. ‘Close Your Eyes’ is a stop-gap dreamy thing, and ‘Sleepyhead’ a bit more urgent with solemn, purposeful bass, and guitar shivers. It’s just like an old Photos song, ‘For Beauties Sake’ but no-one‘ll remember that. So it’s mid-paced, with guitar fractures, and a nasal delivery that keeps the vocals keenly stalking straight ahead.
‘Floating’ has unsettling samples, and a very tough centre but I didn’t find it easy to get a connection to why they were doing it, which carries on into the rough and sweeping ‘Space Jam’ which could be Curve the way it attracts but fails to draw you totally in. This is a sound spectacle and we can observe without feeling. It’s impressive the way it builds and billows, becoming an edifice of sparkling sound, although as this is the musicianship and know-how of Clan Of Xymox engineer Damon Fries maybe it isn’t surprising.
And then a total shock, which you certainly wouldn’t be expecting, as they cover ‘What Do I Get?’!!! For those who don’t know the original, by The Buzzcocks, a frantic and desperate tune is rendered flat and shallow, with the energy scooped out. And yes, it’s a bit like hearing Mike Love’s fabulous ‘Wonderwall’, but this is serious, and it does work, creating a sense of watery regret of its own, which is no mean achievement, and to mention The Sundays again, think of a moodier ‘Wild Horses’.
Afantastically strong album, of opulent stealth. Stormy, yes, but a haven, somehow.
UNALONE
MAYBE YESTERDAY
LAST TRY
SWEET STORM
DISFIGURED AND FORGOTTEN
CLOSE YOUR EYES
SLEEPYHEAD
FLOATING
SPACE JAM
WHAT DO I GET?
http://www.swirlysound.com/boudoir
http://www.pandaimonium.com
THE CRUXSHADOWS
ETHERNAUT (Dancing
Ferret)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
Well it’s better than their last album, and that’s a relief.
It also highlights just what’s wrong with them, which I suspect they may already have learnt from, because in this land of synthpop, which can’t really help but bring back lukewarm 80’s memories (and melodies) a band like The Cruxshadows who once showed such prickly, inspiring potential have gradually lightened and lessened in power to the point where they have all but become transparent. With this album, apparently inspired by the Trojan Wars, they’ve stopped trying for the choruses, for the soppy melodic attention-grabbing, and the music gets a chance to breathe clearly.
The wild vocal joy which intermingles on certain tracks does sound either Japanese or from the Middle East rather than conjuring up Hellenic majesty, but I like the way the synths and violins replicate old horns, and whether lightly whisked or made of sterner beats, they start well, but the Pet Shop Boys tag is impossible to ignore during the first half, and the one thing they need to learn is this. You aim for two hit tracks, and make sure the rest has depth, otherwise you’re not artists you’re business-orientated, and so you may as well go the whole hog and drop artistry in favour of artifice.
Here I think they stand midway and some of the deeper elements are certainly impressive. Even the milky ‘Love And Hatred has real verve, ‘Flame’ has some pomp and romp, and ‘The Sentiment Inside’ is an unexpected joy, being a quieter, fractured piece, emotive and honest rather than lumbered with the copyist vocal stance.
The 80’s rhythmic undertow lets ‘Winter Born’ down badly, ‘Untrue’ trips along nicely and brightly, its corny lyrics too exposed, followed by the slow and artistically oozing ‘A Stranger Moment’ which redeems their weaker, facile moments, which unfortunately crop up too frequently until the end of the album (apart from the extra track) and you’re left feeling curious rather than annoyed.
None of the songs are bad, at all, you can just see how ultra-lite the constructions are and how easily they could have acquired more than bravura and a somewhat sterile quality. For an album inspired by wars there’s very little passion in the delivery, and little in any excesses of sound, whether bleakness or full-on action, so I guess the inspiration was fairly obtuse. However, it does sound more adventurous than their last woeful effort, and has songs which don’t try so hard to be loved, and that’s a heartening sign.
Personally I think they’re doing too much with their schedule, never stopping and never getting time to concentrate on what they’re writing and what it’s actually like. “Where are the artists and the prophets,” Rogue sings. Where indeed? “Lost below the wheels of this machine.”
Precisely. Take some time off. Have a rest.
INTO THE ETHER
CASSANARA
LOVE AND HATRED
FLAME
THE SENTIMENT INSIDE
WINTER BORN (THIS SACRIFICE)
UNTRUE
A STRANGER MOMENT
WAITING TO LEAVE
EAST
CITADEL
AFTER ALL
http://www.ferret.com/discs
http://www.cruxshadows.com
Darkane
Rusted Angel
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
This remastered reissue of Darkane's Rusted Angel is a blunt object smashing devestating riffs into your skull. I missed it when it initially came out in 1999, but Rusted Angel doesn't feel rusty at all. In fact, it is superior to any of the watered down pablum being harvested from the Swedish melodic deathmetal farms these days. The twisting song structures, squiggly solos, and brutal thrashy rhythms make for a varied and interesting album that also happens to be as intense as a high voltage death-ray.
Whatever deficiencies the original release of Rusted Angel suffered from would seem to be corrected in this new version, since I can find few flaws. The production is crisp and gives the various elements their proper sonic elbow room. Each song is dense with sound, but remains both clear and powerful. The only gripes I have are that the sound occasionally clips, having been mixed too hot, and the lead guitar is sometimes a bit too buried in the mix to really cut through. They may be faults of the original recordings, though. I can't say. In any case it is inconsequential enough to hardly matter. What does matter is that Darkane spews out a torrent of blistering death-thrash on nearly every track.
Rusted Angel seems like what Fear Factory probably hoped for - and totally failed to achieve - on their 1998 release Obsolete. Where Fear Factory wound up being repetitive and dull for much of the album, Darkane is exciting and constantly introduces shifts in rhythm and engaging melodies. Otherwise, the albums are quite similar. Both feature a death/thrash hybrid with grunty deathmetal vocals and clean male singing (which echoes both Fear Factory and Soilwork). Darkane's primary vocals, though, spray out as a screamy sandpaper rasp that is surprisingly tolerable and fits well with the tone of the music. The clinical precision of the riffs, gear-shifting syncopation, and jumpy guitar soloing are evocative of a mix of Meshuggah and Morbid Angel. All of the elements come together to produce as enjoyable a 'Swedish melodic deathmetal' release as I've heard. The sheer intensity puts the most recent releases of their contemporaries to shame. Darkane occasionally takes a break from pulverizing the listener for a string quartet interlude or dramatic choral chant, but usually it's full speed ahead.
I find it hard to imagine that fans of the melodic deathmetal or thrash scenes would dislike ths album. And I have one hell of an imagination. I used to draw comic books about a monkey that wanted to get a job who was friends with a squad of dimension hopping Nicaraguan mercenaries. Anyhow, if you didn't catch Rusted Angel when it was first issued, this would be an excellent release to pick up. In addition to the remastered original music, it also includes expertly produced live recordings of 'Convicted' and 'A Wisdom's Breed'. Further, it includes 'Relief in Disguise', which previously was only available as a Japanese import. So, if you missed it the first time, buy it now! You'll like it. If you don't, what are you doing listening to this kind of music, anyway?
Track List:
01.) Intro
02.) Convicted
03.) Bound
04.) Rape of Mankind
05.) Rusted Angel
06.) A Wisdom's Breed
07.) Chase for Existence
08.) Relief In Disguise
09.) The Arcane Darkness
10.) July 1999
11.) Frenetic Visions
12.) A Wisdom's Breed (Live)
13.) Convicted (Live)
Darkane is:
Christofer Malmström
- guitars
Peter Wildoer - drums
Jörgen Löfberg
- bass
Klas Ideberg - guitars
Lawrence Mackrory - vocals
Darkane offical website:
http://www.darkane.com/
Regain Records:
http://www.regainrecords.com
The End Records (US Distribution):
http://www.theendrecords.com
Dekoy
Heartwerk (Self-release)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
Do you like Covenant? Dekoy,
it seems, certainly do. Are you partial to a bit of
Wolfsheim, perhaps? If this
release is anything to go by, Dekoy certainly dig ‘em. Yep, that’s the
area we’re in here - seamless synthpop, smoothly danceable EBM, with those
deadpan, downbeat, melancholy vocals which seem to be the standard-issue
singing style in this generic area.
And that, I think, is the key word - ‘generic’. Dekoy are clearly not in the business of going out on any creative limbs. They’ve absorbed their influences like a sponge and squeezed them out onto this EP, and, frankly, there are no surprises here.
We kick off with an atmospheric instrumental, all late-night cinematics and half-heard heartbeats, and even that’s a fairly standard method of opening an otherwise uptempo electronic release these days. The first track proper is ‘Silent Space’. The beat kicks in, that ol’ four-on-the-floor whump and thump, and suspiciously familiar-sounding arpeggios spiral up and up. Then, a commonplace trick: a sampled voice is thrown in, reciting a snatch of ‘gritty’ dialogue (‘You are nothing but dirty trash’, if you’re taking notes). The melancholy vocal begins to recite the usual ‘woe is me’ lyrics: ‘The scream that no-one hears/If only you could feel my pain’ - and it all trundles along for an entirely predictable four minutes and thirty-five seconds.
‘Your Heart’ follows the same basic blueprint - yep, even down to the quick burst of a sampled voice thrown over the intro. The lead vocal sounds so dejected on this one it’s almost as if the vocalist can’t quite muster enough enthusiasm to reach the end of the track. I fully expected him to give up half way, and walk away from the mic muttering, ‘Aw, bollocks, this is boring, I’m going home.’
In an astonishing burst of creativity, the next track, ‘Submission’ does *not* feature a snatch of sampled dialogue in the intro. Given that Dekoy seem to be slavishly following the generic rule book in every other way, the absence of the industry-standard intro-sample counts as a dangerously radical move. Still, the track is otherwise a pretty archetypal slice of synthpop, complete with a jittery little synth-line and a one-note chant for a vocal. It’s all comfortingly predictable, as if the band are simply building music by following the assembly instructions they found in the packet. Ironically, the lyrics reflect the band’s follow-the-rules approach: ‘On and on we fall in line’ - well, you said it, guys.
‘Darkest Eve’ is the ballad - at any rate, Dekoy ease the BPM down to 125, a tempo which counts as a slowie in this musical area. Here, the band get very, very Wolfsheim: a lachrymose vocal glooms away over a melliflous bed of well-cushioned keyboards.
And then, to finish off the EP, we have ‘Shoot To Kill’. Yes! The intro-sample is back! We’re on familiar ground here - not that Dekoy have ever gone off the beaten musical track - with a jaunty little dancefloor number on which synth-sequences gambol around like kittens, while a lugubrious vocal laments lost love. Or something. The vocalist is certainly not a happy bunny, at any rate. Dekoy, it seems, just don’t do happy.
Oddly enough, given that Dekoy are operating in a different musical area, this EP reminds me of all those goth bands we used to have in the early 90s, who tried to sound exactly like the Sisters Of Mercy, or the Fields Of The Nephilim (or, God help us, both of them at once). None of them ever got anywhere, and the goth scene nearly died from musical stagnation at the time.
Listening to Dekoy faithfully recycle the standard synthpop/EBM moves on this release, I’m forced to the conclusion that the current electronic scene has reached that same kind of feeding-on-itself state. If Dekoy represent the new stuff that’s coming up in the electro-zone, then I think this particular musical area is about to enter a creative wilderness, if it’s not there already. If the only thing the newer bands can think of is to rehash the sounds and styles of the older bands, then I think EBM is going to eat itself. And maybe this is where it starts to chow down.
The tunestack:
Intro (The Mechanical Heart)
Silent Space
Your Heart
Submission
Darkest Eve
Shoot To Kill
The players:
Baza: Lyrics, vocals, sequences,
arpeggios
D.Barnes: Music, samples,
sequencing
The website: http://www.dekoy.us
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis:
http://www.nemesis.to
Desolation Radio
EP 001 (self release)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
Here’s a mysterious band. Neither the EP packaging nor Desolation Radio’s website contain any hard information. Even the names of the band members are not revealed. The only real-world detail we are allowed to know is their location - and that is only by way of a PO box address in Running Springs, California, which Google tells me is a small town of about five thousand souls, six thousand-odd feet above sea level in the San Bernadino mountains. The CD artwork features photographs of (presumably) the local landscape - mountains and forests, grey and misty, with significant evidence of acid rain and/or other pollutants. The overall impression is that Desolation Radio’s worldview is bleak and downbeat, a jaundiced glance from a position of stark isolation - and they’re perfectly happy to keep it that way.
All this, and we haven’t even listened to the music yet. The EP contains five songs, one of which is billed as a ‘hidden’ track, and comes up long after the main four have finished. Helpfully, the band note the existence of the hidden track on the inlay card to make sure nobody misses it, which rather kills the idea of having a hidden track in the first place, if you ask me, but hey.
I’d more or less guessed that Desolation Radio’s music wouldn’t exactly be rumbustious good time rock ‘n’ roll, and so it proves. The band make a kind of slo-mo post-trip-hop groove, somewhat like Portishead with all the fun stuff taken out. It’s an effective, although not particularly uplifting, sound - but then, I’d guess that’s the whole point. Desolation Radio just don’t do uplifting.
The first song, ‘Down’, lives up (or, indeed, down) to its title; it’s a pean of woe featuring amorphous, barely-there female vocals which, paradoxically, give the track as a whole a lift. There’s also a male voice, which half-murmurs, half-drones, but never quite gets as far as singing. The contrast between the different voices works well, although, frustratingly, the female vocalist does not appear on all the songs. Most of Desolation Radio’s vocals are sung (well, almost) by the male vocalist. Over the course of several tracks his imitations become obvious, and somewhat annoying.
‘Devolution’ is a mash-up of squabbling guitars and distorted beats, the nearest thing to a rock song you’ll find here. I like it, but I think I would’ve liked it more if I hadn’t already heard Living With Eating Disorders do similar stuff with a touch more verve. ‘The Loosing Streak’ is a lengthy croon which, frankly, outstays its welcome: the song simply drags along without really reaching any particular destination. The radio-atmospherics are a nice touch, but they can’t compensate for the absence of any real tension or resolution, or indeed any feeling that the song is *going* somewhere. I should point out, incidentally, that the title really is spelt like that. I don’t know if this is some sort of frightfully clever pun, or if Desolation Radio simply can’t spell ‘losing’.
‘Lullaby’ has that familiar scratchy-record effect as a rhythmic gimmick, and I’m afraid I’ve heard it too often to be impressed. Everyone from Johnny Cash to Cinema Strange has done the scratchy-record thing now, and I really do think it’s about time everyone had another idea. The male voice drones through the song as if it’s about to conk out from sheer ennui. And then, finally, after holding down the skip button until we reach Track 13, we come to the secret bonus track, which is another downbeat male-vocal drone - until a child’s voice crash-lands on the song with some (I hope!) intentionally tuneless ‘la-la-las’ and teeth-clenchingly untutored disharmonies.
I’m a little frustrated by Desolation Radio. They’ve got some good ideas, but they fall back too often on that droning male vocal and gimmicks which are either tiresomely over-familiar (the scratchy record effect) or just plain tiresome (the child’s voice). ‘Down’ perhaps shows the way forward: it’s certainly the nearest thing here to a fully-realised song. But then, I’m not even sure if Desolation Radio even *want* to find a way forward. It seems to me that they’re making their melancholy, introspective music almost exclusively for themselves. Finding a way to engage with the rest of the world is, it seems, very much an optional extra for this band.
The tunestack:
Down
Devolution
The Loosing Streak
Lullaby
?
The players:
Anon.
The website: http://www.desolation-radio.com
Visit Running Springs:
http://www.city-data.com/city/Running-Springs-California.html
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
Earth Loop Recall
Compulsion (Wasp Factory)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
The Wasp Factory label’s very own sound-sculptors release their much-anticipated debut album - and you know what? It’s a bit of a good ‘un.
Now, when I describe Earth Loop Recall as ‘sound sculptors’, I’m not indulging in typical reviewer-hyperbole (at least, not *this* time). This band doesn’t so much make music, as carve songs out of blocks of raw sound. Compulsion is packed with dense, intense, towering slabs of guitar-fuelled contemporary rock noise. It’s an exhilarating racket, but be warned: there’s no holding back here. Sit and listen to this album in one go, and it’ll leave you drained and breathless afterwards. Earth Loop Recall have a very simple aim: to take the listener on a wide-eyed, white knuckle ride...and someone’s disconnected the brakes.
The name of My Bloody Valentine is often dropped as a handy comparison when Earth Loop Recall are being described, and there’s certainly an element of MBV’s relentless, insistent, overwhelming rush of sound in ELR’s own music. You could, perhaps, also namecheck Sonic Youth, in their early, experimental period, before they recorded ‘Goo’ and went all bubblegum-punk on us. I’ve seen Nine Inch Nails mentioned as another point of comparison, although I’m not entirely convinced by this one. Sure, there’s certainly the odd hint of NIN-ness in the Earth Loop Recall noise (particularly ‘Reconnect’, which adventurous DJs could probably mix quite effectively with ‘Head Like A Hole’) but in truth ELR really don’t touch base with any of the usual goth/industrial influences. They’re coming from a different place: the out-there end of the post-punk scene, when to be ‘alternative’ meant something more than just recycled Beatles riffs and cartoon belligerence. Earth Loop Recall - last of the true alternative bands? Or part of a gathering tide of indie-with-attitude? Probably a bit of both.
The Earth Loop Recall sound is firmly based around The Mighty Electric Guitar. There are layers and layers and layers of guitar here, racked up and up over weirdly effective electronic atmospheres and programmed rhythms which swing along with such verve you’d hardly believe it’s all done by machinery. Check out ‘Peta Lena’ for a confident, broad-brush mash-up of programming and laminated guitars, or ‘Please Stop Hurting Me’, with its effortless command of dynamics. One minute it’s a slight little thing, a wistful ballad of lost love, then suddenly it leaps up and bites you like a dog, and the lyrics get quite venomously sardonic: ‘You don’t mix well with alcohol/You don’t mix well with chemicals...’ I would also recommend to your attention the weirdly groovy ‘Optimism Creeping In’, with that odd little guitar-jangle, like John McGeogh just happened to be strolling past the studio at the crucial moment, and then that big, bad, rev-up of a chorus, with the electronic rhythm, down in the mix, subtly but relentlessly nudging everything along. It’s all so neatly put together - this is certainly a band who know their music inside and out. Right at the end, ‘Remember Me’ trips you up, for it’s a neat little spooky-orchestral instrumental, an unexpected moment of come-down after the roaring and clamouring that preceded it.
This is a tremendously assured debut, and, with ‘nuff respect to the other acts on Wasp Factory’s roster, top quality artists all, possibly the most fully-realised, the most *complete* release the label has ever put out. In short - it’s damn fine stuff.
Now all you need to do is go out and buy it.
The tunestack:
Reconnect
Mesh
Petra Lena
Please Stop Hurting Me
Slowly Going Under
Let Yourself
Wake Up Shaking
Optimism Creeping In
Like Machines
Remember Me
The players:
Mark Waterhouse: Guitars,
noises, synths, programming
Ben McLees: Vocals, guitars,
bass, synths, programming
Joanna Quail: Backing vocals,
synths, programming
Gareth Small: Programming,
production
The website: http://www.earthlooprecall.com
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
Elenium
for giving - for getting
~reviewed by Eric
Rasmussen
Elenium is one of those rare bands that manage to do things badly and still sound great. Whether their missteps are total flukes - beginner's luck - or an intentional bending of the rules, I can't say. But as I continue to listen to for giving - for getting, I'm inclined to trust the band's ability. You see, they play metal that is undeniably technical. The riffs and drums will kick your ass, the angry singer can shift seamlessly into evocative clean melodies, the keyboards are surprisingly moving, and the bizarre solos sometimes feature the chaotic blippiness of the death metal squiggle solo style, but with a more impressive range of notes that makes them appear melodic even when they are not.
Yet Elenium is one of the most confounding bands I've come across. For all of their technical skill, their sense of melody and phrasing is highly unusual, to the extent that it often sounds like the work of amateurs. From the incongruous melodic tinges of "up the long ladder" to the absurd barrage of random noise on "subcreator", you might wonder if Elenium has ever heard non-metal music.
Much like Ephel Duath's recent album, The Painter's Palette, Elenium manages to play melodies in a way that would be terrible in any other context. That potential dross is passed through Elenium's Crazy Metalifier and morphed into something truly innovative and gripping. The end effect will henceforth be known as chaotic absurdist metal. Or CAM, as I'm fond of generating new acronyms. The heavy riffs, frightening melodies, engaging vocals, and occasionally spectacular keyboards give for giving - for getting a most endearing quality to fans of wacky metal.
At the end of the day, I still can't decide whether or not the members of Elenium are musically inept but technically proficient, musically brilliant but risky and experimental, or simply insane. And, at the end of the day, I don't really care. for giving - for getting is one heck of a ride, and if you enjoy any of the more bizarre strains of metal, you'll no doubt appreciate Elenium's style. If nothing else, the band will certainly encourage strong reactions. They even prompted me to invent a genre name just for their benefit. The first installment in the brand new Chaotic Absurdist Metal genre is a worthy one, so give it a listen.
Track List:
1) up the long ladder
2) eye for a lie
3) impostor
4) nameless - faceless
5) moments
6) subcreator
7) under the mug
8) for me
9) to aim and miss
Elenium is:
jukka - voice
lemmi - distortion
johannes - keys
mikko - pulse
kasperi - distortion
tuomo - subfrequencies
Elenium - Official Site:
http://www.eleniumband.com/
Rage of Achilles:
http://www.rageofachilles.com/
The End Records (US):
http://www.theendrecords.com/
Fiction 8
Forever, Neverafter
(Cryonica)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
I’m slightly surprised to receive this album. It’s been such a long time coming - over two years since the band’s previous album, Chaotica - that I was beginning to think Fiction 8 had split up, or at the very least had ‘gone on hiatus’, or whatever bands do when they just...stop. From time to time, I’d consult the band’s website to see if any new information was forthcoming, but it remained (and still remains) resolutely out of date. Even now, as I write, the ‘Latest news on releases and band information’ was last updated in July 2003, and while the existence of this album is mentioned, there’s nothing to tell us what the band have been up to since then. Meanwhile, the biography section only takes the story up to 2000! Late last year, Fiction 8 pitched up in London for a gig (the December 2003 issue of StarVox has the review) and I was pleased to see that the band was still alive and well and making music. But I reflected that here was one bunch who were never likely to win any awards for the hardest working band in showbusiness.
Well, the website might be permanently in arrears, but the new Fiction 8 album is here at last. As I recall, Chaotica was a rather cool display of cut-the-crap-and-hit-the-chorus pop songwriting, and Forever, Neverafter showcases once again the band’s ability to write neat little songs which stick in your head. But it’s a slightly more downbeat collection this time round: there’s an air of melancholy surrounding this album, a feeling that while Chaotica captured the band on a pop high, this album documents the come-down.
I don’t know if this effect is intentional, but the songs here do tend towards the introspective. The rhythms are mid-tempo; the vocals of Michael Smith have a disconsolate, pensive quality. ‘When I wake I fear I’ll find/That I’ve lost all track of time/And now it’s all too late’ he sings on ‘Too Late’, and the feel of the song is fairly typical of the album as a whole. Although ‘Too Late’ has a nice backing vocal treatment which gives the song a lift, I can’t help wondering what’s put Michael down in the dumps. What, exactly, is ‘too late’? Maybe he’s referring to the website updates!
Elsewhere, the melancholy aura continues. On ‘Forgive Me’ Michael Smith seems to be abasing himself before a friend or lover, weirdly enough before he’s actually done anything wrong. ‘If I cannot see it through/If I ever fail you/Can you forgive me? he pleads, as if he knows with a grim inevitability that he’ll let everyone down. The song appears to be an anthem to low self-esteem, and the lyrics contrast quite oddly with the jaunty synthpop backing. ‘Save Me From Myself’ repeats the trick: a paradoxically pleasant synthpop song with woe-is-me lyrics. ‘The walls again are closing in/It’s all I can do to fight this fear’, we learn. Keyboard player Steven Hart takes the lead vocal on this one, although the singer-switch isn’t immediately obvious. At any rate, the song was written by Michael Smith in his trademark gloomcookie style, and I find myself rather unsympathetically wishing he would look beyond his own internal ennui for a lyrical subject for once.
But there are shafts of light in the darkness - one of which, paradoxically enough, is ‘The Dark Room’. The vocals on this one are taken by the band’s bassist and violinist Mardi Salazar, who has a voice full of character and can actually *sing*. Michael Smith, as I’m sure he’d be the first to acknowledge, has distinct limitations as a vocalist: think of a more forlorn version of Rogue out of the Cruxshadows. With this in mind, it seems frankly perverse to have a singer of genuine ability in the band and then not allow her near the vocal mic on most of the songs. Mardi is only permitted two lead vocals on the album, and she transforms the sound of the band each time. ‘The Dark Room’ has an almost eastern feel, as Mardi glides effortlessly into one of Fiction 8’s classic choruses. Her second contribution, ‘Around and Around’, has a bedrock of vintage Human League-style synths and a dance floor stomp of a rhythm, over which Mardi strides with confident assertion. These are the standout tracks on the album: Mardi Salazar simply sounds so much more at home on the mic than Michael Smith, it seems crazy that she isn’t allowed to do more.
So, a slightly disappointing
album in some ways - there’s too much here which sounds like a band perversely
refusing to acknowledge their own strengths, and too many lyrics which
sound suspiciously like depression-by-numbers. Fiction 8 are still masters
of the catchy synthpop tune, and they still have an ear for a cool chorus
- but here, everything’s buried beneath layers of melancholy, and I really
think they need to break that mood.
We’ll file this one under
‘good but not great’, then. Personally, I’m just waiting for Mardi Salazar’s
solo side-project...
The tunestack:
Too Late
Crash
The Dark Room
Winter Rain
Around And Around
Forgive Me
Nothing More
Save Me From Myself
Stranger In My Skin
Silent
Winding Down
The players:
Michael Smith: Vocals, guitar,
keyboards, programming
Mardi Salazar: Bass, violin,
vocals
Steven Hart: Keyboards,
programming, vocals
The website: http://www.fiction8.com
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis:
http://www.nemesis.to
Fictional
Fiction
~reviewed by Eric
Rasmussen
If sad robots made music, they'd make EBM.
And if I had my own calendar of Daily Wisdom (now with extra lambent wit!), I'd write sentences like the above just to confuse people who don't know the score. But if you're reading this review, I'm guessing you have heard EBM - you know, it's that electronic music with reasonably sad but expressively challenged vocals, predictably ordinary techno beats, and synth string arrangements that still elicit positive responses no matter how many times they're used.
Fictional plays EBM with the best of them, but unfortunately Fiction sounds just like the best of them. You might even mistake them for Icon of Coil, if you aren't paying careful attention. Let me run you through the basic song progression:
A lone cymbal hit or percussive
noise coalesces from nothingness, signaling the beginnings of a beat
The beat continues
A metallic, quasi-melodic
noise joins the beat
Robotic, monotone vocals
begin to sing silly lyrics
Backing strings harmonize
with the vocals
And... well, that's about it. Not as exciting as you thought, eh? That basic pattern and variations on it comprise nearly every EBM song you will ever hear. While Fictional does it as competently as any other, they do so in a way that is completely devoid of originality. I'm not personally burnt out on this style of music, so I find it pleasantly enjoyable, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it if you own any other EBM CD and do not wish to build a collection of seemingly cloned releases by sad robots.
Track List:
01. the sound of the falling
rain
02. the weatherman
03. dorian gray
04. burning man
05. intensity
06. little girl
07. hunting machine
08. genuine experience
09. private nightmare
10. perfect stranger
11. voyager
12. losing
13. mariner
14. when the world is dying
Fictional is:
Gerrit Thomas
Jason Bainbridge
Metropolis Records:
http://www.metropolis-records.com/
THE FACES OF SARAH
promo CD
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
For a band who got plenty of UK-based support and word-of-mouth excitement just because they could play gigs with melodic power, as did Belisha, the line-up problems and a short passage of time since then may not have seemed to done them any great favours, but their lack of live activity certainly hasn’t helped. You always have to wonder, after such a promising start, whether a band is off somewhere, secretly recording epics, and this 5-track promo CD maybe gives a few hints.
They have a video/dvd of ‘Misery Turns’ coming shortly, featuring Candia from Inkubus, which could be included on a Metal Hammer freebie, and they’ve a new EP planned. The Metal Hammer release may help introduce them to the widest audience they require, because here is a band, going on ‘Impurity’, who understand what made The Mission work, and The S*s*e*s too come to that, and therefore produce a sleeker, modern version, with a different guitar sound. No, I don’t mean to imply they’re copying, as that’s boring, but they’re in that rock-based tradition, minus any hippy elements, and the guitar starts to slap you repeatedly as the chorus gets underway, becoming a constant thrill as the song unfurls. It’s big, it’s very clever, and it’s probably a load of bollocks lyrically, but made to sound impassioned and quite glorious.
‘Now That’s It Over’ has the dead man’s hand rock grinding riffology, and the old slow dark vibrato of an Eldritch cloning experiment where words are made to sound perilously morbid. I never listen to the words when they come at a crawl and rely instead on the guitars which are reliably thick and strangling nicely. The vocals just sound too po-faced and consciously created as a ‘style’ to be taken seriously, but if you liked ‘The Final Countdown’ you might well enjoy this!
‘Song For Kali’ is total rock slaughter, with just enough gaps and surges to send you hurtling happily into mental oblivion as you shudder along, because it’s a compulsively barbaric thing, and obscenely catchy, even I they do seem to be singing ‘Charlene’. A secret ‘Neighbours’ tribute? (Probably not.)
The real skill opens up slowly during the quivering delight of ‘All I Want’. Twice as good as any of the others, this is remarkably soft but stuffed full of feathery ideas and an exquisitely emotive panorama. It gets noisy and wallows in its own turmoil. With these do depart from the Goth scene and into rockier waters but good luck to them, you can tell it’s perfectly natural. ‘Keep Breathing’ is Gothtastic-lite rock, and rumbles along with a comfy guitar guide and shattering vocal fury, which is neatly impressive and still ends up on the rockier side of the fence, which is no great surprise, or problem.
If they haven’t progressed noticeably in the next twelve months they’re finished, and the tiny UK Goth scene certainly can’t help them any more, so they have to help themselves. It’s still dark, it’s still moody and it looks like success.
http://www.thefacesofsarah.net/
The Fair Sex
Thin Walls - Part
1 (a best of compilation)
~reviewed by Blu
Before the scene got watered down with copy-cat-living-room-musicians fueled by creatively-stunting fancy technology there were pioneers of the electro industrial scene whose technology was still raw and gritty enough that it took some fine brain power to produce interesting songs. I can throw around names like Kfaftwerk, Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy and Front 242...you all know the drill (or should). 1984 saw the addition of The Fair Sex from Rossen Germany who started out as a pure organic band but by the early 90's after the loss of their drummer, had reformed and re-emerged as one of the most popular German Electro Industrial bands out there. Nearly 20 CD releases later with a few breaks to work on side projects the band is still at it with touring plans for 2004.
Thin Walls Part 1 is the first of two "Best Of" compilations. It was released in May 2003 and features 15 songs from Bite Release Bite (1991), Spell Of Joy (1992) and Labyrinth (1995), one new track called "The Ever Unreached Aim" and two mpeg videos: "Not Now. Not Here." and "Cyberbite" which was recorded live in March 2003.
Opening with the neo-classical intro "Anne. Lyz" it plunges headlong into the floor stomping beats of "The Ever Unreached Aim" - their new single. Listen carefully kids. This is how EBM *should* sound. It's not light and fluffy. There's dark embers burning under dangerous urgency. If this is any indication of what their new CD will sound like, I think we having something to look forward to.
"Not Now. Not Here." is probably one of their biggest hits and with good reason. It has the danceable beats of the late 80's, the funky instrumentation of Nitzer Ebb (much like "Lightning Man") at the break, and just enough gristle in those German vocals to make it meaty. "Alaska" with its sampling and minimalism echoes of early Front 242 while a tad disappointing tempo-wise "What's To Be Done Now" settles down into more melodic territory.
"Soulspirit: Antifascism" is pure aggression with angry guitars laid out against rigid beats and shrieking chorus lines. "Fat Bellies' Hunger" keeps you moving right along with its psychotic beat and then throws you into Puppy-mode with their heavy "Cold Comtempt." "Cyberbite" - seemingly popular among their fans - is an ok song with some complex instrumentation but just doesn't go anywhere for me after alot of wind up. "Shelter" opens with alot of fun machinery noises but those seem to over power the vocals a bit -- perhaps just bad levels in the mix. "Eat Me" is back to the floor stomping 4/4 tempo that club kids these days would immediately gravitate to while "White Noise" with its more complex intro and electro vs guitar layering is much more interesting to me. Changing pace completely is "You Know How" with its clear vocals and urgent keyboard-driven beat and rock n' roll style guitar breaks demonstrating just how well this band merged the genres back then (and bands nowadays are claiming their so original in that task!). "Woe" is a short bit of haunting instrumentation acting as a set up for "In the Desert" with it's eerie music box lament and acoustic guitar work.
If you've been a fan of The Fair Sex this CD is a nice set of their more popular songs. If you're new to the scene and think that EBM is defined by bands like VNV and Apop, I urge you to check this out and get back to the roots of it. And finally, let it be a reminder and a warning -- they've not departed. Three more CDs are in the works: the second part of Thin Walls, a live compilation and a new studio album that will hopefully put industrial back on the right track.
1. Anne. Lyz (Spell of
Joy)
2. The Ever Unreached Aim
(new)
3. Not Now. Not Here. (Spell
of Joy)
4. Alaska (Bite Release
Bite)
5. What's To Be Done Now
(Spell of Joy)
6. Soulspirit: Antifascism
(Spell of Joy)
7. Fat Bellies' Hunger (Bite
Release Bite)
8. Cold Contempt (Bite
Release Bite)
9. Cyberbite (Labyrinth)
10. Shelter (Bite Release
Bite)
11. Eat Me (Spell of
Joy)
12. White Noise (Labyrinth)
13. You Know How (Labyrinth)
14. Woe (Spell of Joy)
15. In the Desert (Labyrinth)
The Fair Sex - Live Dates
24.04.2004 - Franken Schwarz
Festival
Band website: http://www.thefairsex.de
Label: www.endless-records.de
Funhouse
Flames Of Love (M&A
MusicArt)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
This is the latest album from Funhouse, those crazy gods of Blastorama Goth ‘n’ roll, and as you might expect it’s a good old hold-on-to-your-hat rollercoaster of grandstanding rock. But here comes the wild card: the songs here seem to relate the chequered history of old love lost and new love gained; pages torn from a secret diary.
Now, all of that might make it seem like we’re in for a full-on slush-fest, and it’s certainly true that the lyrics do sit fairly firmly in the heart-wrenching zone. But it all has the ring of truth about it. If I’m not much mistaken, this album is lyricist and lead vocalist Mike’s way of recounting the break-up of his marriage - there’s even a dedication in the credits to ‘...my ex-wife (guess there wouldn’t have been any songs without you)’ - and his new-found happiness in his new relationship. In fact, there are moments when the lyrics get quite disconcertingly personal. Reading through the lyrics in the inlay booklet, and coming upon sentiments such as ‘You don’t hold me, you don’t love me now/You’re just making fun of me/You don’t kiss me, you don’t care about me/You’re just making fun of me’ (from ‘Everythings Gone’) feels uncomfortably like reading someone’s personal correspondence. It’s quite an achievement to write stuff like this, and give it that ‘for real’ feel - it’s so easy to fall into the trap of reciting trite phrases without ever igniting that essential spark of authenticity, as anyone who’s heard Wayne Hussey’s songwriting efforts in this direction will know.
Funny I should mention Wayne Hussey, because, of course, The Mission are one of Funhouse’s prime musical influences. But the factor which lifts Funhouse head and shoulders above all those bands which are nothing more than the sum of their influences is that Funhouse do the Mish-thing with a panache that puts Wayne’s mob of anonymous session hacks to shame. The music here is swaggering, cinemascope rock, teetering towers of guitars, drums that effortlessly swing. Hey, all you bands who try to do rock music to the backdrop of a frantically whirring drum machine - listen to the almost fiendishly casual way Funhouse drop their drumbeats into the swirl of the music. *This* is the way it should be done!
Just because I’ve namechecked the Mish - as you can hardly fail to do when discussing Funhouse - don’t run away with the idea that this band makes some sort of retro noise. Very cleverly, they’ve updated the sound with some nifty interjections of electronic atmospherics and programmed percussion - sometimes, you’d almost believe they’re going to come over all trip-hop, until those goth-dark guitars suddenly crash in like coal being tipped into a cellar, and the drums swing the backbeat into the rock ‘n’ roll groove. ‘Oceans Of Tears’, which from the title you might expect to be a rather contrived acoustic ballad, slinks along on understated electronics until, almost before you’ve noticed what’s happening, it builds into a rampaging anthem of luuurrve. ‘Star In My Heart’ is, perhaps, the most balls-out rocker here, clattering along like The Cult used to do before they took too many Led Zeppelin pills and it all went tragically wrong for them. Maybe that’s the peculiar genius of Funhouse - they can take the sounds and the styles of their favourite bands, give ‘em a shake-up in the Mighty Funhouse Rock Machine, and end up showing their erstwhile mentors a thing or two.
The tunestack:
Care For You
Chosen One
I Feel Joy
Star In My Heart
So Cold Without You
Cry For Love
Everything’s Gone
Heart Speeding
Last Time
Oceans Of Tears
The players:
Mike: Vocals, guitar
Peter: Guitar
Mans: Bass, vocals
Dee: Keyboards, vocals
Jonas: Drums
The website: http://www.cherryfields.net
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
Gardens of Gehenna
Mechanism Masochism
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
In continuation of the trend this month whereupon I lamely use the name of the album I'm reviewing to make fun of the band that produced it, I must say that Garden of Gehenna's Mechanism Masochism is a very effective mechanism for masochising me. The self-inflicted suffering I faced while listening to the album several times was bearable, but unpleasant. The forty-eight minutes of doom-death presented therein are largely uninteresting and repetitive, and plod along at roughly the same pace thoughout. I suppose it succeeds, as most doom-based records do, at creating an atmosphere of glum oppression... but even that is tempered by the strangely emotionless grind that perpetuates for an endless eternity.
Gardens of Gehenna are not without their merits. They seem to be capable musicians. The clear, sharp production preserves all the sonic nuances of their boring music in exquisite detail. That's pretty much where the merit ends and the demerits begin. Andreas Opel rumbles along in his low, low deathmetal growl with long drawn out syllables that could be a monster's lullabye. I wonder what that says about me, since it threatened to put me to sleep several times? The guitarists are chained to each lugubrious riff for so long that if this was a wax LP, I'd have checked to see if it was skipping. It's this minimalism and simplicity in song structure that makes this album impossible to enjoy.
Occasionally, the band does stumble on an interesting idea. Clanky industrial loops are deposited randomly throughout the album, adding a somewhat grim futurism to the sound. I'm divided on whether this enhances the doom aspect or utterly ruins it, though. The clinical coldness robs the music of emotion... but at least it provides some color to the sonic palette that they had previously restricted to only black and a dash of really dark gray. Sparing use of melancholy violin lines also adds a bit of depth to the music, but the frequency with which such adornments appear is so low that it does little to relieve the monotony.
Whether or not you like this album boils down to how high a tolerance you have for slow, churning songs that drag on and on. If you're a fan of minimalism and repetition, you will find them in abundance here. The musicianship of the band is not in question. They perform what they've composed with skill. It's the nature of those compositions that has me wishing the album was over barely after it's begun. Perhaps with more emotion and a few interesting riffs, Mechanism Masochism could have been a pretty good listen. As it stands, I won't be revisiting the Gardens of Gehenna, since nothing appreciable grows there.
Track List:
01. A Dissonant Prelude
to Divine Decay
02. The Downfall of Jezira
03. Demon’s Diaspora
04. Sestra
05. Gods of Gloom
06. Opus Noctis
07. Blood Dark Floods
08. The Anatomy of Melancholy
09. Dark Angel
10. RabenNutte
Gardens of Gehenna is:
Andreas Opel - vocals, guitars
Birgit Lages - bass, vocals
Bastian Rosner - guitars
Michael Schoner - drums
Gardens of Gehenna Official
Website:
http://www.gardens-of-gehenna.de/
Grau Records:
http://www.grau.cd
The End Records (US Distribution):
http://www.theendrecords.com
GRAVEYARD BATS
SMASH YOUR LIE (GB)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
No track listing and precious few details, because this is more of a work-in-progress and a CD sent out to members of a certain board who requested copies when the offer was made. A proper Graveyard Bats album will be a while yet. With actual members in various states and one man largely responsible for everything I hear, this is as basic as it gets.
The important thing is that it’s music which takes us swooping back into the past and away from standard viewpoints, which I believe makes it a very modern concern indeed. While large portions of this eighteen minutes of segments and songs is a clattering mess, there is much in the spirit of the music which sounds more exciting than the average CD which comes politely through my door of a morning. It’s an odd, stark throwback and that rawness frequently succeeds in sounded enterprising and worth examining where too much modern Goth with its pristine, perfumed finery lacks even the ability to surprise.
I’m not laying any claims of greatness of Graveyard Bats because they have everything to prove. They just start off sounding different, because once you get past the Rozz croak and lolloping drum beat, which diffuses any potential to attack, throwing the main emphasis on the vocals, you at least gets space, and feeling.
You also get a few moments which remind you of Sex Fiend on ether, plus some strange dub vocals, even primitive rap echoes over strangely shunting keyboards, which creates quite a ghostly appeal. The guitar remains strictly linear, the vocals sound highly aggrieved and it’s dark as Hell.
”I died for you, now it’s your turn to die for me…”It’s going to be fascinating to see how this develops, and whether many more bands realise that character comes from what you personally show, not how nice the wrapping is.
http://graveyardbats.darkalcove.com/Frames.html
Gene Loves Jezebel
Exploding Girls (
Bless Momma Records)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
So, another band of the old-skool reappears with new material. I’m tempted to remark, in the way that I frequently do in this kind of situation, that me and Gene Loves Jezebel - we go back.
Except, in truth, we don’t, really. I confess I rather missed out on Gene Loves Jezebel first time round. Their early years, when Jay and Michael Aston were fresh up from their home town of Porthcawl in Wales, doing their post-punk/weird-glam thing on the London alternative scene of the early 80s, more or less passed me by. Maybe that was my loss, because Gene Love Jezebel’s beaten-up-but-cool left-field aesthetic, which ran through all their earliest material, was pretty much where my own head was at that time. Maybe I was too busy worshipping at the holy shrine of Bauhaus to take much notice. But for whatever reason, I didn’t pick up on what Gene Loves Jezebel were doing until the mid-80s, by which time they’d stopped doing it, and had headed off to the USA for a whole new career as big-budget mainstream-friendly pop stars.
America was good to Gene Loves Jezebel. As the 80s rolled into the 90s, the band hit a peak of success. Bankrolled by a major label, their videos featured regularly on MTV, chart hits there for the taking, they lived the high life of the rock ‘n’ roll celebrity circuit. There were, of course, casualties along the way; line-up changes and in-band stress. In 1989 the relationship between the Aston brothers, always somewhat tumultuous, fell apart, and Michael Aston quit the band - or was forced out, depending on which biography you read. From that point on Gene Loves Jezebel became Jay Aston’s baby. Except it’s not as simple as that, because Michael temporarily returned to Gene Loves Jezebel for live shows at intervals over the following years, and, bizarrely, was even featured as a ‘guest performer’ on some mid-nineties recordings released by the otherwise Jay-fronted band.
By the late 90s, the major label glory days were over for Gene Loves Jezebel, but the band continued to record and tour. In 1998, I saw the band - featuring Jay Aston as the sole frontman - play an all-day goth bash named the Zeitgeist festival in London, along with such luminaries of the 90s scene as The Marionettes and The Merry Thoughts. The band had been permanently based in the USA for some years by this time, so to see Gene Loves Jezebel in London was a rare treat. Alas, the performance was lacklustre. All the original verve and glam swagger which was once synonymous with the Gene Loves Jezebel name had been replaced by a mid-Atlantic, middle-of-the-road, workmanlike rock approach. Jay Aston himself, attired in blue jeans and cowboy boots like a low budget Bruce Springsteen, led the band through some clunky bar-band renditions of the old hits, pausing only to make lame rock star small talk in a transatlantic drawl - ‘Hello London Town!’. I think he lost the audience right at the start, when he introduced the band as ‘Gene Loves Jezebel from California.’ Here in the UK, we - perhaps rather quixotically - still think of Gene Loves Jezebel as one of ours. To see Jay Aston trying to portray himself as an All-American Rawk God in front of a crowd who remembered where he *really* came from amounted to a masterclass in how to alienate a previously sympathetic audience. The heckling was spectacular.
After that show, I decided that I wouldn’t be bothering with Gene Loves Jezebel any more. But then Michael Aston, staking his claim to the name, formed his own version of the band. He made an unexpectedly cool album - ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ - a taut, wired, maelstrom of swirling guitars and soaring vocals, with a lyrical theme which, although always fairly cryptic, could be interpreted as a heartfelt open letter to his estranged brother. Not that it did any good, mind: the Aston brothers maintain a hostile stand-off between each other to this very day. However, encouraged by the album, I went along to see Michael Aston’s Gene Loves Jezebel (as this particular incarnation of the band was rather clumsily identified) play at the Underworld in London in 1999, and I was rewarded by a minor classic of a gig. Michael Aston himself came across as unpretentious and friendly, and was happy to chat with fans after the show - in, I was pleased to note, an accent which was refreshingly free of transatlantic rock star-isms. Nevertheless, the absurd situation thus created, in which two different Gene Loves Jezebels existed at the same time, did neither version of the band any good. I suspect many fans simply walked away in confusion at this point. Certainly, that Underworld gig in ‘99 was woefully under-attended, and I reflected ruefully on the sad irony of it all. Michael Aston had created a revitalized, energetic and entirely contemporary version of Gene Loves Jezebel at precisely the point when the band’s long-suffering fanbase had finally given up and buggered off.
So, after all these shenanigans and after all this time, it’s something of a surprise to find a new Gene Loves Jezebel album on release. It’s even more surprising to note that, although this is Michael Aston’s band, his name does not appear as a qualifier on the front of the CD. This band is billed as is Gene Loves Jezebel, pure and simple. Presumably this means that Jay Aston - who of late has been performing both under his own name and as ‘Jezebel’ - has relinquished his claim to the band name, thus allowing his brother to become the ‘official’ Gene Loves Jezebel. It’s all a bit of a moot point, however, since none of the musicians on this album were ever part of the classic Gene Loves Jezebel line-ups. The name remains, but this is essentially a Michael Aston solo album.
Exploding Girls doesn’t have the same kind of intensity that marked Love Lies Bleeding. It’s a more restrained affair, more - dare I say it - mature. It’s as if Michael Aston has decided to position himself somewhere between Coldplay and U2, in that area of grown-up, thoughtful, slightly-alternative guitar bands. That’s a logical career move, I suppose, especially when you consider that our man must now be in his mid-40s. It’s hardly reasonable to expect him to come at us like the twentysomething glam-goth he used to be. For all that, there are times when I wish he’d cut loose a little more, get weird, get crazy; there are moments when this album is a little too straightforward and sensible for its own good. According to the Gene Loves Jezebel website, the album received a glowing review in Rolling Stone, which perhaps gives us an insight into the territory it occupies. Rolling Stone markets itself to affluent, middle-aged music fans who want something easy on the ear for the CD player in their SUV. It’s not in the business of championing the young, loud, and snotty. If Rolling Stone likes something, you can be sure it’ll be a smooth musical ride - and so it is with Exploding Girls.
This is a concept album, of sorts: all the songs here are about women in one way or another. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s an endless array of tiresome ‘I love you’ numbers, as you’d expect if, say, Chris Rea explored this subject matter. Sure, there are love songs, such as ‘My Heart’s A Flame’, which, apparently, is Michael Aston’s pean to his first girlfriend. But most of the songs take other tangents, and on occasions dive head first into the big issues. The title track, for example, is about Wafa Idris, the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, and explores the overwhelming intensity of feeling that she must have experienced to push her into taking such extreme action. That’s a brave angle on the subject, especially in the present climate, when the general ‘western’ reaction to suicide bombers is hardly likely to be suffused with empathy. I’m not entirely convinced by the song’s bouncy pop chorus, though: ‘Boom boom, here she comes now, my exploding girl’. At this moment, Michael Aston sounds so jolly you’d think he was watching a firework display.
Interestingly enough, given his brother’s apparent total absorption into The American Way, Michael Aston is at pains to point out, on the dissection of domestic strife that is ‘Downhill Both Ways’ that he’s ‘not an American’. Incongruously, however, he delivers the line in such a drawn-out drawl - ‘Ahhhh’m naaaaht ‘n Amerikaaaan’ - that you’d almost believe he grew up on a farm in Iowa. He then tops this with a great cry of ‘Bey-beh!’ at the end of every line in the chorus. Well, I’m heartened to know that he’s still aware of his roots, but what’s with the comedy accent all of a sudden? It sounds uncomfortable and self-parodic. I thought it was Jay Aston who’d gone all transatlantic on us!
Michael Aston’s willingness to write direct, pithy lyrics which address the big issues of today is impressive - and also rather unexpected, since Gene Loves Jezebel have never had any previous reputation for going head-on into politically informed songwriting. Even the songs which explore the ins and outs of relationships do so with a refreshing, and at times jaundiced, candour. There’s certainly some new, and interesting, lyrical ground being broken here. But I just wish the music jumped up and bit me, and, alas, it simply doesn’t. This is an album of carefully crafted, smoothly produced guitar rock, which nods in the direction of ‘alternative’ without ever really establishing any kind of attention-grabbing individuality, and that’s the point at which Michael Aston and myself part company. I can’t help feeling that this album might have had a bit more fire and brimstone in the music - or maybe just a few off-centre musical ideas - if it had been recorded in the frantic chaos of London, rather than the kick-back-and-take-it-easy air of southern California. Ultimately, Exploding Girls doesn’t quite detonate.
The tunestack:
Exploding Girl
Love No Longer
Downhill Both Ways
The Wanting Song
Jenin
My Heart’s A Flame
2 Hungry Women
Blue Mary
Aire (Buenos Aries)
Wind & Fire
The players:
Michael Aston: Vocals, guiutar
Michael Ciravolo: Guitar,
keyboards
Pando: Bass
Michael Brahm: Drums
[If you think that having three Michaels in one band is an amusing coincidence, you’ll be pleased to note that the producer is yet another one: Michael Rosen].
The official Gene Loves Jezebel website, devoted to the current incarnation of the band fronted by Michael Aston: http://www.genelovesjezebel.com
The other half. Jay Aston, now a solo artist both under his own name and as ‘Jezebel’, has a website here: http://www.jayaston.com
A slightly hysterical biography
of Gene Loves Jezebel on the Beggars Banquet label site. Takes the story
up to 1997. Does not cover the period in which two rival versions of the
band existed, or recent events:
http://www.beggars.com/banquet/index.htm?../artists/catalogue/gene_loves_jezebel/index.htm&0
A rather more factual biography
of the band, with plenty of dates and details. Takes the story up to 1998,
but does not cover the emergence of Michael Aston’s version of the band:
http://www.artistdirect.com/showcase//indie/genelovesjezebel.html
Separate interviews with
both Michael and Jay Aston can be found here, on the Aversion.com webzine.
Jay’s interview - conducted soon after Michael’s version of the band emerged
- contains some appropriately pithy remarks:
http://www.aversion.com/bands/genelovesjezebel
A quite brilliant fan site devoted to the early incarnation of Gene Loves Jezebel, before the band decamped to America and pop stardom. Put together by one of the band’s earliest followers, the site is technically fairly basic, but a real labour of love. Photos, fanzine interviews, and adetailed biography of Gene Loves Jezebel’s early years interspersed with heartfelt ranting from the writer. This site captures the heady enthusiasm of the early-80s UK alternative scene in a virtual nutshell: http://www.gljpooh.co.uk
And, just to prove that you
can find anything via Google, here’s a summary of the arbitration entered
into by Michael Aston to assert his claim to the genelovesjezebel.com domain
name: http://www.arb-forum.com/domains/decisions/117322.htm
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis:
http://www.nemesis.to
Ghost Orchids
The King Is Dead
~reviewed by Matthew
Heilman
San Francisco’s Ghost Orchids generate an engrossing ‘digital dance-punk’ sound, tweaking the hypnotic strengths of vintage synth pop and utilizing contemporary technology to arrive at an edgy and invigorating sound. The band’s music is a great deal more than just a nostalgic rehash of familiar ideas or sounds. Rather, this disc showcases a more intricate usage of synthesizers and electronic rhythms that the myriads of fashionable electro projects have lost sight of over the past decade or so. It is immediately apparent that the band is concerned primarily with constructing mesmerizing atmospheres, and this is superbly achieved by relying upon sparse nocturnal pulsations, prominent bass lines, and cold cinematic synths that are tightly woven atop terse glitch-ridden drum loops. The rhythms hit hard and provide a consistently up-tempo momentum, despite being somewhat thin when compared to the standard 4/4 ‘thuds’ most of us are accustomed to hearing these days.
Admittedly, the trebly tone of the drum loops might be hard for some to get used to at first, but they ultimately yield a strong and dynamic groove. The percussive heart of the band beats haphazardly, ticking and twitching with an arachnid anxiety and throbbing with stark menace. While some might find the accompanying drums dated, most I trust will perceive how rhythm is used to anchor the songs as well as to shade the overall mood of the pieces.
In terms of the vocals, both male and female voices are employed regularly (though there are a few instrumentals scattered throughout). Julian Myers’ vocals are usually delivered with seething restraint, smooth and honeyed with hints of John Balance (Coil) or Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire), punctuating and accentuating the ebb and flow of rhythm, volleying from heated whispers to detached mechanical chants. At particularly excited moments (sometimes with a deliberate suddenness) he permits a raw, strained rasp to slip past, heightening the sense of paranoid restlessness that builds and is best exemplified in the album’s manic title track. The well-chosen passages with Bonnie Pipkin at the mic contribute an additional layer of subtle and breathy sexuality, complete with a few unexpected scream-squeals as tracks like “Love Inversions” and “Fierce Child” finely illustrate.
The fusion of shadowy understated electronic backdrops and co-ed vocal interplay instantly reminded me of Attrition’s early and more sinister work, and I suspect that bands like Visage and New Order had a significant impact upon the band’s creative vision as well. Where the Ghost Orchids make the grade though is in the fact that they appear to have studied these bands and their techniques, and have found new ways to interpret them, as opposed to merely miming their heroes.
A creeping and surreal volatility is one of the Ghost Orchid’s most magical qualities. Things never get too sonically over-bearing or thematically indulgent, therefore the band’s straightforward ‘less is more’ attitude is incredibly effective, arresting the listener by keeping them in suspense. It might take a few listens to fully appreciate, but rest assured, the band’s clinical agitated style seeps under your skin, becoming an aural itch that can only be scratched first through surrender and then indulgence.
Overall, The King Is Dead is a claustrophobic and pleasingly dark release, rich with subdued urgency that enthralls and enchants, but does require a bit of patience. Nearly every track has some hook or distinctive bit to it, but the album’s most accessible highpoints appear in the shape of “A New Bloodtype” and the irresistibly hard-hitting “Keep Your Secrets,” both of which are more traditionally structured and punchy tracks. Some songs succeed where others do not, but the band’s strengths seem to be concentrated and are very obvious after successive listens. These tracks sound more certain of themselves when compared to instrumental cuts or a song like “Synthesizer Bruises” where the arrangements don’t gel quite as well and the atmosphere isn’t quite as unsettling. I suspect that the Ghost Orchids will follow-through and continue to sharpen their atmospheric attack with future releases. Whatever the case, this release (their second full-length in the scheme of things) is certainly chock full of memorable highlights and it is one of the most intriguing and enjoyable CDs I received for review in 2003. I imagine that the Ghost Orchids will appeal to a wide array of dark music fans looking for something a bit different.
Track List:
1.) A New Bloodtype
2.) Keep Your Secrets
3.) Love Inversions
4.) The King Is Dub
5.) A Hole In The Speaker
6.) Fierce Child
7.) Synthesizer Bruises
8.) Nothing Can Hurt You
9.) The King Is Dead
10.) The Sensual Woman
11.) Inside (And Out Again)
12.) Nothing Can Hurt You
(Sharper Version)
The Ghost Orchids are:
Julian Myers – vocals, bass,
guitar
Bonnie Pipkin – vocals,
synths
Christian Beaujean - percussion
Chris Golden – lighting,
projections
Official Site:
http://www.ghostorchids.com
PrinceHouse Records:
http://www.princehouserecords.com
GHOST TRAIN
Nice To Creature (CD
single)
(Wreckage Productions)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
And so Tony Lestat, Zambo and Kento ride forth, in the kitschest buggy available, throwing all mental caution to the wind. With this strange limited edition CD single, which is also on 7" vinyl release if you're quick, the title track is cocky sleazebilly, which adheres to all the rules with the vocals big and yowling, the guitar outbursts snappy strarbursts and it's the Cramps/B-52's meltdown you'd expect, with nagging riffs and a lolloping beat.
The other song is "Viva Las Vegas", every bit as cretinously frothy as it has to be, with fruitiery guitar warmth and lighter vocal senility. A strange release then, but definitely fun, and there's an album soon.
Check for details at: http://www.ghosttrain.net
HAFLIFE
GUILTY PLEASURES (Haflife/UrbanLegendsDetroit)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
Like our very own History Of Guns, Haflife take all things rocky, hippery-hoppery and slippery-trickery from within the electronic sub-Industrial cortex and bend things widly out of shape, tame certain funkoid elements and then reshape it all into playthings that they find entertaining and accommodating. They weld rock onto the dance and by keeping it highly melodic they grab our attention. By keeping on the harder side, without being esoteric, they also keep us on edge, and I like that.
I liked their last one too, and I admire this. It eventually drifts off with a saucy remix after some disturbing bleakness, a fitting way to go, but for the main part of its existence it thrusts at us: crudely yes, lewdly no, for all the imagery, because it doesn’t have to rely on just bump or just grinds, when it can so easily blind.
According to the press release they’re on a mission to reinvent the beat, which hasn’t happened here, but they are dallying with hybrids, where you know they can make this even more powerful, for just half a song here being better than the average Industrial or Electro offering. ‘Another Mind To Kill’ has peculiarities in the vocals, where they surge along with power but just hold back occasionally, so where you expect a rhythm to keep curving conventionally, it adheres instead to a more rigid pace. First you get the pause, then you get the glory.
Prince meets a grim ending sums up ‘Break-up Sex’. It has its lean wiggles but the guitar guile ensues fluidity, and the haranguing verbal filth spews out, the combined effect like sabotaged exhausts filling a church, and where eclectic club styles run into rock’s hoodlum yammering, which we can call ‘Freakdown’ it’s a strung-out, jabbing melee. Think go-go dancers, in a cage of intestines.
That’s almost as conventional as they do get. Slimy funk rock, to some. Then they give us slinky, stark funk during ‘Just Because…’ so you can imagine what Primal Scream might be like if they were god, powerful and not old dossers. It’s a sulking hulk of a song. True, they dip slightly with the woolly ‘Limp & Twitch’, a rocky prowl, but Alice Cooper’s contaminated grandchildren create ‘Morning Down’, making enough noise to scare The Beasties.
‘Detroit Underground’ is quality rock, with choking, clipped guitar fury and charcoal vocals overheating in a molten chorus. The ‘White Lie’ drips and groans, big and brusquer but with no real dance action, making it a breather, mired but mighty, before they start hushed during ‘If It Bleeds’ and then it’s a breakout, the sound of certain words almost splashing on the hot asphalt of the music, sizzling provocatively.
You know what? It’s rather good.
INTRO
ANOTHER MIND TO KILL
BREAK-UP SEX
FREAKDOWN
JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE PARANOID
DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE NOT AFTER YOU
LIMP & TWITCH
MORNING DOWN
DETROIT UNDERGROUND
WHITE LIE
IF IT BLEEDS IT LEADS
POWDER BURN
DETROIT UNDERGROUNDS (SPARKY
DEVIL REMIX)
Haloblack
Throb ( Armalyte Industries)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
Ah, at last - some grit in the gears, some ghosts in the wires.
Just when we all thought the electronic/industrial area of music had dwindled down to smoothly-produced dancefloor blandness, here comes Haloblack with an album of glitches, hitches, off-kilter ideas, loping beats and weird noises. Throb is an excursion into left-field electro-organic experimentation. Sometimes it’s puzzling, sometimes it’s uplifting, occasionally it’s oddly funky - and sometimes it just sounds like your hi-fi’s gone wrong. What more could you want?
The vocals, such as they are, predominantly arrive courtesy of Bryan Black (he who is Haloblack). He whispers disconnected snatches of lyric over (and sometimes under) the clicks and glitches and odd sounds which make up Haloblack’s neo-musical vocabulary, while Arianne Schreiber lends her bluesey croon to several of the songs. The effect is a weird collision between the cold, hard textures of hi-tech, and warmer, natural human sounds. Sometimes, slabs of guitar crash down; at other times, the music is driven along by low-slung, funky basslines. It all hangs together with an effortless spooky coolness, and it’s always recognisably Haloblack - but you’re never quite sure what they’re going to do next.
Here are some examples. ‘Why?’ is a grab-bag of crackling wires and unexpected effects over a stop-start beat. ‘Feel’ sounds like the Human League, circa 1978, ripped apart and soldered together without reference to the instruction book. ‘Junky’ is a festering slice of mutant swamp-blues, with touches of subtle guitar, and Arianne Schreiber dragging the words out in a world-weary wail. ‘Punch The Deck’ has a low-slung bassline and sudden interruptions of metal-riffs, the kind of racket that probably soundtracks Jaz Coleman’s worst nightmares, while ‘Love Mechante’ sounds like what would happen if you drowned Giorgio Moroder in electric soup. ‘Drugbeat’ is probably the nearest thing to a conventional rock song here - and even then, it doesn’t get too near. It’s a bluesey low-rider, all gritty bass and an ever-building climax - ‘Drugbeat...drugbeat...drugbeat’ - and I suppose if any of the music here is ever likely to touch base with all those industrial fans who think that wearing a NIN baseball cap is kinda rad, this’ll be the one. But, in general, ‘Throb’ exists in its own time and space. It doesn’t trouble itself with what’s cool on the scene right now - in fact, I doubt very much if Bryan Black even knows there’s an industrial scene. He’s definitely out on his own limb here, and his music is all the better for it.
I’m sure that most of today’s clue-free cyberkidz will be utterly baffled by this album. There is absolutely nothing here to which you could wave a glowstick. Me, I think it’s a mordant, minimalist masterpiece.
The tunestack:
Why?
Feel
Vapour
My Sacred
Junky
Out There
Punch The Deck
Love Mechante
Tonight My Body Feels So
Tight
Permanence
So Volatile
Drugbeat
The players:
Bryan Black: All sounds
and vocals, except:
Arianne Schreiber: Vocals
Raymond Watts: Vocals
Charles Levi: Bass
Kraig Tyler: Guitar
Oliver Grasset: Programming
Toby Doig: Feedback
The website: http://www.haloblack.com
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis:
http://www.nemesis.to
Invocator
Through The Flesh
To The Soul
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
Thrash is making a serious comeback these days. Between Agent Steel's Order of the Illuminati and now Invocator's monstrous Through The Flesh To The Soul, anyone who forgot what made thrash so great in the late 80's has a reminder they can't ignore. I never caught Invocator's first foray into thrash (between 1989 and 1995), but their return to the genre is a blazing, intense, bruising sonic assault. They blend many elements old and new into a riveting discourse on the finer points of kicking your ass.
Jacob Hansen's angry yet eloquent vocal delivery sits somewhere between Devin Townsend and Chuck Billy, a perfect blend for thrash. He can erupt with passion or subtly emote whatever the song requires, and never lacks for raw, brutal punch-you-in-the-face stopping power. Hansen's hammer-like rhythm guitar riffs provide a suitable bed for the excellent lead work discharged by Flemming C. Lund. Lund often takes off on wild chromatic flights of frenzy, bringing deathmetal sensibilities to many of his solos, but doesn't lack melodic grace when he's called upon to deliver it. Balancing power and art seems to be a skill in which the whole band is well versed.
The songwriting and production on Through The Flesh... are reminiscent of The Ritual era Testament... except that where Testament toned down their aggressive tendencies, Invocator's driving pulse sends the riffs flying furiously and the emotion is palpable. It's a good trick, having lush, sonorous production values without losing some edge off the pure thrashy grit the genre demands. Invocator, under Hansen's direction as producer, pulls it off. This is a picture of what mid-90's thrash would have sounded like if it hadn't degenerated into a radio-friendly suckfest. Brutal yet beautiful. Articulate but raw. Soilwork captured some of that essence on Natural Born Chaos, but Invocator takes it a step further into territory rarely tread.
This album is a must-have for thrash fans, plain and simple. Fans of the Immortal school of black metal will appreciate the brutal rhythm riffing and driving percussion. Devotees of melodic deathmetal will certainly approve of the intricate yet unpredictable leads and solos. Anyone who likes old or new Testament will find Invocator to be similar without being at all derivative. So, who -wouldn't- like it, then? I dunno... there's probably some jerk out there. Don't be that jerk.
Track List:
01.) Intro
02.) Through the Flesh to
the Soul
03.) Writhe in Spit
04.) On My Knees
05.) Flick it On
06.) Infatuated I Am (Speak
to Me)
07.) There is No Savior
08.) The Chemistry of Restlessness
09.) Under the Skin
10.) Fire Cleanses All
11.) Sand Between the Teeth
Invocator is:
Jacob Hansen - Vocals /
Gutitars
Flemming C. Lund - Lead
Guitars
Carsten Mikkelsen - Bass
Jacob Gundel - Drums
Invocator Official Website:
http://www.invocator.com/
Scarlet Records:
http://www.scarletrecords.it/
The End Records (US Distribution):
http://www.theendrecords.com/
Jim Lampos
Cosmogram (Clocwyse
Recordings)
~reviewed by Kevin
Filan
Artists have been reinterpreting folk music for centuries. Scottish ballads influenced the poetry of Robert Burns; Bela Bartok incorporated the music of the Hungarian countryside in his symphonies. New York musician Jim Lampos follows in that tradition. His latest CD, Cosmogram, is firmly rooted in the imagery and ideas of traditional American music, combining the Appalachian folk tunes and Delta Blues with the world-weary sophistication of a Leonard Cohen.
According to Lampos, Cosmogram “contain[s] ... a physical space that [the songs] move through, often quite literally... Ultimately, Cosmogram is about topography, about finding ‘the lay of the land’ in both a physical and spiritual sense.” In lesser hands, this kind of extended conceit could become unbearably pretentious. Lampos is able to pull it off, thanks to his talent and his intelligent, thoughtful songwriting.
The arrangements on this CD are as unadorned as they come: one vocal, one acoustic guitar. Yet this simplicity is deceptive. Lampos is a master of the six-string, finger-plucking lovely, intricate chord progressions. These complex sound patterns are matched by his hyperliterate lyrics. Words rustle against each other like footsteps creaking in a haunted house; lines stretch on well past the point where they should scan... yet somehow they do.
(My only gripe with Cosmogram is that Lampos does not include a lyric sheet, nor does he put his lyrics on his website. Hopefully he will correct this oversight in the future. His words definitely can withstand scrutiny and deserve careful attention).
The opening track, “Franklin’s Milestone,” evokes the Old Post Rode, and the milestones which Ben Franklin erected so postal riders could judge distances. A soft guitar line rings sweet and distant as the next town while Lampos sings:
the conversion comes at the point of the swordThe best folk music is timeless, hearkening back to a should have been that always and never was. Is the traveller who’s “trying to get to ithaca/but i’m sleeping here tonight” Odysseus, hero of the Iliad, trying to return to his castle in Ithaca, Greece? Is he a trucker trying to make it to Ithaca, New York? Is he both or is he neither? It’s a dual metaphor worthy of James Joyce, an extended conceit within an extended conceit.
the confessions are forced the testimony is false
you were looking to escape
skirting the edge of the grave
the night i saw you at the mason’s waltz
down down down that old post road
till we meet again at franklin’s milestone
Lampos is unabashedly intellectual, but he’s also capable of throwing off a raunchy, earthy blues tune like “Act of God”, with the obligatory woman who can “make a preacher man lose his soul.” And if there were any justice in this world, “Riding With Destiny” and “Wastelands” would earn Lampos a permanent gig in Nashville: his wandering souls could have stepped out of a Johnny Cash song or a Flannery O’Connor novel.
This CD catches you from the beginning and draws you in. It also stands up to repeated listens; it’s earned a high place in my iTunes Top Rated list. It’s not synthpop (for which we can be eternally grateful) but if you’re a fan of Nick Drake, Richard Thompson or Leonard Cohen, you’ll be all about *Cosmogram.* Heck, if you like your music straight up and dark with a twist of intelligence and a faint glimmer of hope and beauty, you’ll be playing this one over and over.
1. Franklin’s Milestone
2. Riding with Destiny
3. Ithaca
4. Winter Circle
5. Walking On My Hands
6. Digging In the
Garden
7. Wastelands
8. Barroom Nights
& Highway Days
9. Happy Hour
10. Who Will Save Me?
11. Act of God
12. Belle of Freetown
13. Learning to Read
14. Hidden Transfixed and
Transformed
15. Autumn Comes Again to
New England
16. Hoof It On Home.
Jim Lampos Website
http://www.lampos.com/
THE LEECHES
SUCK
(British Medical Records)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
We don't get enougn Punk or Indie content on the Mercer landscape for me to tell you about, and it does make a winsome distraction from your Goth expectations, no? So when I tell you this is a scintillating release which should interest anybody with a penchant for lean guitar cuisine which nevertheless explodes with life, and is blessed by a vocalist of great character and panache I expect you to be seriously intrigued and I have no doubt you are.
The fact it is quality isn't hard to understand because you already have one proven talent in guitarist Andy (ex-Arguments and Crank) who makes his snotty instrument swagger and creak with disdain for anything bland. But here he is tied up with people who believe in the same credo, of spirited low-slung vitriol and humour, and the record bleeds.
It's short, it's terse and Lizzi Wood has a very distinctive style, as though a poetic novella was being set alight every song. The words may not mean mucn in themsaelves but it adds a sharp nuance to the proceedings, where the boys are being ferocious without geting too strident. Recorded 'at home' they generally oscillate cleverly, because the vocals can never go head to head with the noise, but have to alternate. You know the score.
Now, song-wise they're trim and quite lethal. 'Consequences' is choppy and vibrant, with Liza Doolittle striding to the fore throwing busy lyrics at us while the kittenish band cry havoc. 'Um...' gets chirpy as she becomes odder; the guitar a furious splash of colour behind a black widow. I'm not at all surprised that when they did what UK bands never do - got off their arses and created a simple rumpus in America clever enough to ascend college radio charts - because this is Blue Pulp Velvet Twin Fiction Peakes and while 'Trailer Trash' is vinegary and messy, 'Slice Up' with the muted R&R axis, which immediately leers and veers off into cute, lovely pauses and lyrical shorthand, creates a weirdly sparse but highly fluid concoction, because melodic vocals always create and sustain momentum.
'Obedience' has whispers for added menace and gets both chimier and creepier, where 'Fuck It' is punk rawk, with what they hope will become a terrace chant, although 'Fuck it, you're shit, I've had, enough of it' isn't slick enough for today young hooligians, but it is the greatest song the Slits never recorded.
'Hey' is a curvier thing and one of two tracks which don't work as well here but live must come alive, being curvier, fuller, with rhytmic holding patersn to create variety ('Worms' is the other, which makes sense of their Blonbdie comparisons, although we're talking pre-Blondie, i.e. The Stilletoes). In 'Dangling Man' we've got a spiritual link to the mighty Big Black in many ways. Imagine them with a female voice, wrecking a pop trampoline and you're close to the spiky insousiance of The Leeches (now Screeches, if I'm assuming correctly).
So you really do want this. It's divine.
CONSEQUENCES
UM...
TRAILER TRASH
SLICE UP
OBEDIENCE
FUCK IT
HEY
FLASH
DANGLING MAN
WORMS
The Legion
Unseen to Creation
~reviewed by Eric
Rasmussen
The Legion's debut full-length, Unseen to Creation, is one of those CDs that really kicks ass in a metal sort of way. Tommy Tatgren's (Eternal Gray, ...And Oceans) killer production turns otherwise generic but well-played metal into a raging powerhouse flurry of drums and riffs and rasps that'll throttle you endlessly. Or at least for the 36 minute CD duration. And the various creepy ambient interludes vary the music remarkably well, at once adding depth and vanquishing the villain monotony in its dastardly tracks.
But, although Unseen to Creation is a perfect example of straight-forward ass-kicking metal, there isn't a whole lot to distinguish it from all of the other examples of straight-forward, ass-kicking metal. Thus, I'm repeating myself to take up review space. Is there anything you'd like to chat about before the conclusion? Something that's been on your mind, maybe? Stray cats and the acquisition of sandwich construction materials? Isn't Dragutinovic a neat name? Tiwaz too. They're members of The Legion.
At times like these, I find myself resorting to a band's image for material. I've already successfully described the music, you see. If you've heard Summon, or like, any other black metal band with some symphonic elements and very heavy/fast guitars and drums, you've heard The Legion. The Legion just happens to do the sound well, and with a production that's worth writing about until the cows go home. Or however that saying goes.
So - their image. The cover art is kind of neat, and it appears to be portraying an alien planet. In fact, it looks a hell of a lot like the planet in Alien. And the band name is The Legion. A legion of... aliens, perhaps? Coincidence? I certainly hope not, or I've just wasted several sentences discussing nothing. Which is what I would have done even if I was still talking about the music, because I'd only have repeated the first paragraph in fancier terms. To conclude, The Legion is a swarming horde of aliens that will burst out of your chest and eat you but it'll be fun along the way if you like that sort of thing. Worth looking into if you haven't filled your quota on the not-mandatory-but-fun black metal CD quota thingie.
Track List:
1. Intro
2. Retribution
3. Those Beyond
4. Redeemer
5. Cosmopathic Deathvoid
6. Knee-Deep in Blood
7. On Swift Wings
8. Ascendancy
9. Awakened Fury
10. Invoking the End
11. Rise of the Fallen
The Legion is:
Tiwaz - Guitars and Effects
Dragutinovic - Battery
Anders - Vocals
Svartz - Guitars and backing
vocals
Lars - Bass
The Legion - Official Site:
http://www.legion.nu/
Listenable Records:
http://www.listenable.net/
The End Records (US):
http://www.theendrecords.com/
Living With Eating Disorders
Selling Self Hate
More Than This EP
(both demo CD-Rs)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
A couple of calling cards here. These CDs are essentially demo material, not on general release, but readily available from Living With Eating Disorders themselves at gigs. Alternatively, all the songs can be downloaded from the band’s website. The recordings date from an early two-piece incarnation of the band; they’ve since expanded to a four-piece, so the band’s current sound isn’t necessarily captured here. Nevertheless, you can certainly get the flavour of the unusual and highly individualistic musical vision of Living With Eating Disorders from these songs.
It’s rare to be able to describe a band as ‘unusual’ and ‘individualistic’ without crossing your fingers behind your back. These days, when it often seems that everything in music has been done and there’s nowhere new left to go, to stumble upon a genuinely innovative band is quite a surprise. But Living with Eating Disorders are that very thing. Sure, you can guess at their influences, and at times even hazard at the kind of stuff they’ve got in their record collections - but the end result is very original. That fact alone should make us all sit up and take notice.
There’s a feeling of going wide-eyed into the darkness about the band’s music; a freaked-out tension lurking beneath the surface. Some of the material here is introspective, downbeat - almost jazzy, in a bleak, stripped-down, three o’clock in the morning manner. But sometimes, the hidden tension bursts out, and the songs flail and shudder, fragments of guitar suddenly shooting everywhere. Andrea, the vocalist, sings in a wistful croon, then, when you least expect it, bursts forth in a ragged caterwaul.
‘I Talk To God’ is a stark, minimal little masterpiece, a strange, unsettling song with a lyric which might make sensitive souls blanch - ‘I talk to God when you think I’m just harming myself’ - and sudden eruptions of guitar which shoulder their way into the loping groove. ‘Horsemilk’ scratches and scrabbles and picks at itself, all ragged nerve endings and layers of squabbling guitar. ‘Demon In The Wheels’ sounds like seventeen songs at once; changing direction abruptly and heading off into utterly different sounds and arrangements. Somehow, it all hangs together, but you’re never quite sure how.
‘Death And Sequins’ sounds like 1979 put through a blender, a Siouxsie And the Banshees demo tape ripped up and mangled and dragged through a piano backwards. It also has a quite splendid glam-noir lyric - ‘Death and sequins become you’ - which I’m sure every goth band on the planet will soon be wishing they’d written. ‘Lullaby’ has the vocal so far to the front of the mix that it sounds like Andrea’s in the room with you, an disconcerting experience when you realise the song is another of the band’s self-harm anthems: ‘Even when I smile I feel my skin crying to be whole again’. Somehow I don’t think ‘Crazy’ Chris Moyles will be putting this one into heavy rotation on the Radio One breakfast show.
It’s interesting, having stressed Living With Eating Disorders’ originality, that the few songs on these CDs which don’t quite hit the mark are those on which the band seem to channel their influences a little too directly for comfort. ‘Never Know’, for example, is far too much like Portishead for its own good, and even employs that scratchy-record sound effect, which was new and cool when Portishead did it on ‘Dummy’, but has become a commonplace gimmick these days. But this is a minor quibble, and it certainly should not obscure the genuinely novel and inventive stuff the band come up with elsewhere. If the band can curb their occasional tendency to veer too far into the trip-hop zone, they surely can’t fail to hit paydirt. Living With Eating Disorders have something new and odd and discomfiting and special here.
The tunestacks:
More Than This EP:
Lullaby
Envy
Softly
Selling Self Hate:
Never Know
I Talk God
Horsemilk
Rock
Demon In The Wheels
Feeling
Gag Reflex
Arm
Death And Sequins
Dark Nevada
Menace
Bodybag
The players:
Andrea Kerr: Vocals
Jared Hawkes: Keyboards
Mark Bishop: Bass
Jamie Morrison: Drums
(Note: only Andrea and Jared are featured on these demo releases)
The website: http://www.livingwitheatingdisorders.co.uk
Also see: http://www.livingwitheatingdisorders.com - this is an older web page, now obsolete, but it features a good selection of photos of the band.
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
MALICE IN LEATHERLAND
promo
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
Yes, it’s a crap name for a band, but it’s what they’ve chosen: probably because they’re obstreperous types. Their whole attitude is cranky and louche, the little bastards, and you’re going to come to love them for that, while I sit here seething, all but furious that I can’t pin down the comparisons which best describe them. Mainly that’s because I have never dwelt long enough in the gutter of rock to actually recognise them, which is a sign of my sheer nobility, but it’s irritating nevertheless. Certainly I can’t see any of their professed influences holding sway in this music, other than early TSOL, but what I do see is so wildly, vibrantly different from what I normally review, and what you normally hear, that it’s heartening to see them swaggering about and so clearly needed within the Goth scene.
They’re so odd, and so proudly confrontational. ‘Suburban Holocaust’ also shows, lyrically, that they’re not happy bunnies. They’re more likely to be suicide bunnies, throwing themselves at you with full-throated rasping, confident vocals, as fiddly bomb-funked bass unfurls and subtly metally guitar folds in with it. At times it becomes an immensely powerful sound, and strangely mature despite its raw feel. At other times the guitar, which can be so effortlessly picturesque, is also the main irritant as though constantly itching for a rock solo.
The extra-throaty stunner that is ‘Send More Paramedics’ will have you hooked after a couple of listens, because this is disgracefully distinctive. The highly stylised vocals hint here at astonishing depth, so the wiggly-piggly interests they have which allow them to drop off the tension and start doodling is highly annoying. If they were more conventionally melodic they would be getting quite awesome soon. That said, the vocal/guitar stand-off is horribly hypnotic and the shrill chorus wonderfully demanding.
‘A Happy Death Now’ is a punishing sprawl which comes wrapped in chrome-dipped barbed wire. ‘Those fucks mask their hate as justice, to leave me hanging from a tree.’ (All together now!) The vitriol blasts and bleats as the song trickles like blood perfumed with petrol and, to emphasise their weirdness, the old-fashioned guitar solo actually makes sense, and even begins to skip when the drums kick in.
‘From Under The Floorboards’ then does what it can to weaken the overall impression by being a squealing waltzing nightmare, with the boom-boom-boom drums and spidery guitar motif redolent of Alice’s pre-Cooper Nazz, if that’s any help (which it isn’t to me), and I throw my hands up and confess that I really don’t know what this is, but something remarkable is trapped inside, and growing, like a tumour with world-domination on its agenda.
Scurry along to http://www.sinsanctuary.com/mil/
this instant!
Funny interview: http://www.maristhegreat.com/brainsplatter/2004jan/malice.htm
Mutilated Mannequins
Lordship and Bondage
~reviewed by Blu
There's alot of creative words being thrown around on the info they sent me like "glamorous sci-fi," "horror underworld" and "theatrical art rock." And I'm thinking this could be interesting even if the title is a bit silly. And it starts innocently enough with a piano solo which is obviously going to lead up to some kind of exploding entrance as guitar and percussion fall inline.
And well, I didn't pay attention to the bit that said, "soprano shrieking."
If their intention was to take you by surprise, they've succeeded. But I do feel compelled to say this: These are THE WORST vocals I've ever heard. Forget American Idol try outs. High, shrilling stuff that goes all vibrato and out of tune in the upper registers. It's actually painful to listen to.
If you can somehow get beyond the vocals, the music is your run of the mill rock/metal 80's leftover.
Ouch.
http://www.mutilatedmannequins.com/
Moonspell
The Antidote
~reviewed by Matthew
Heilman
The Antidote marks Moonspell’s seventh release since their inception in Portugal in the early 1990s. Over the years they have achieved much critical acclaim, and unlike the legions of mediocre Gothic Metal bands that have formed in their shadow, Moonspell has always retained their stance alongside the forerunners of the genre with their creative integrity and credibility firmly intact. With this new release and after the tour they embarked on last year with Type O Negative and Cradle Of Filth, my respect for the band has only been further cemented. Frankly, they stole the show and proved to be a tough act to follow. I will admit that though I initially liked Darkness & Hope, the band’s previous release, I haven’t felt the urge to return to it much since it was first released. With The Antidote, some of their last album’s highlights (the title track, “Heart-shaped Abyss” “Firewalking”) have been refined and there seems to be a greater maturity in the songwriting here.
“In And Above Men” is an explosive and lofty assertion that Fernando and pals mean business this time around. A brutal, thrashing number with Fernando’s distinctive guttural growls and sinister rasping at the forefront, coupled with thick bottom-heavy guitars and a gigantic rapid fire, double bass fueled chorus that demands the listeners rapt attention. With its direct and basic (though effective) monstrous intensity, the track succeeds on a number of levels before gracefully segueing into “From Lowering Skies,” one of the best tracks the band has produced yet. Drummer Mike Gaspar is the star of the show here, as he is on a number of this album’s conscientiously rhythmic tracks. The song is divided evenly between a pummeling tribal flair to score the verses and a cold climactic chorus replete with a gigantic blast of guitars and creepy piano accents. It is a perfect symmetry of Gothic and Dark Metal elements, split evenly for an even greater dramatic effect. This is the formula the band sticks to throughout most of the album. In the past, Moonspell often attempted to fuse the two styles together, sometimes very ingeniously as with classics like “Opium” “Butterfly FX” and “Tired,” but here the contrast between metallic harshness and atmospheric (though heavily rhythmic) passages works very well.
“Everything Invaded” is one of the catchier tracks on the CD, at once the most commercially viable offering (in terms of a potential to make an impact on MTV2 or Fuse’s metal programming) and yet the band’s classic elements are in no way diluted. And speaking of music videos, “The Antidote” CD is enhanced with a multi-media feature showcasing the work of Portuguese author José Luis Peixoto, excerpts of which can be read to a score of atmospheric keyboard loops from each track of the album. I have yet to fully explore this extra element of the CD, but thus far, the surrealist stream-of conscious prose reads perfectly with the ethereal accompaniment that the band provides, and it certainly will shed more light onto Fernando’s lyrics, which were based in part on Peixoto’s writing. Additionally, the promo video for “Everything Invaded” is included, which finds the band performing in a dusky windswept woodland setting, interspersed with actors paying homage to action motifs in horror films (running panicked in the woods, discovering ancient manuscripts, fleeing axe-wielding maniacs, and the band themselves portray a quartet of dusty undead rising from the desert sands a la “John Carpenter’s Vampires”). While in writing it sounds relatively silly, the way in which the video is shot is quite cool and effective, and the performance footage of the band captures them in vigorous glory. Hopefully, it won’t be too long until Century Media releases a DVD retrospective of the band, which would hopefully include their numerous music videos (including the appropriately Decadent clip for “Opium”) and a full-concert or two.
Back to the music—“Southern Deathstyle” is an immaculate track, big and bold with tight whirlwind drumming and abrasive guitars, which slice through a moody slap-bass groove that scores the verses. The song is a creative synthesis of Slayer inspired thrash metal aggression, ethnic drum battery, and the spooky bass driven funk of say, a darker Specimen or some of Play Dead’s classic singles. It would be fair to even acknowledge the title of the track to bring a heavier Southern Death Cult to mind. Whether or not Moonspell were actually conscious of these Death Rock staples when writing this material is questionable, the few fans out there that acknowledge ‘obscure’ Goth and modern Gothic Metal will perceive the striking and unifying similarities. (Though I did speak with Fernando briefly when they played in Pittsburgh and he is a big fan of The Cure, Joy Division, and as he said in broken English ‘Echo and Bunny-Man”)
The title track is a slightly more progressive arrangement of sweeping acoustic guitar and a more crooning performance from Fernando. The song is underscored throughout by lulling, melodic distorted bass lines, which climax into polished outbursts of power chords and moody guitar leads. “Capricorn At Her Feet” is a solid and effectively gloomy masterpiece. A dash of Type O Negative can be detected in the thick percussive chord progressions and a slight similarity to My Dying Bride can be heard in the doom-laden twin guitar harmonies that give the song it’s initial melancholy. But it is the majestic, graceful passage that appears about 2 minutes into the track that really sets it apart. Murky arpeggios and hypnotic drum cascades punctuate that passage, with a gloriously haunting guitar lead at the forefront. The song beautifully flirts between plodding eerie doom and melancholic elegance, and is certainly one of the most triumphant moments in their discography thus far.
“Lunar Still” follows on its heels, an equally, if not more powerful song unlike any other track the band has done yet. There is a lengthy and very dark ethereal intro, characterized by a tense restraint, somnolent chimes, deep foreboding synths, and Fernando’s icy whispers. The band has flirted with these kinds of interludes before, but never was such a subtle symphonic technique so deeply explored. But just when you think that the song is merely an ethereal chiller, it takes a dramatic turn when Fernando lets out a guttural roar and the band explodes into a swinging pounding dirge of unbridled Doom paced intensity. The previous restraint is sacrificed for a freer, looseness of rhythm and cold, almost discordant interplay between icy cinematic keyboards and supremely heavy, ominous guitar work. It is definitely one of Moonspell’s darkest and most intriguing tracks ever.
“A Walk On The Darkside” starts off with a deceptive, almost Cult like riff and a driving heavy rock rhythm. But it, as well as the next cut “Crystal Gazing,” are brilliant slabs of muscular Gothic Rock, with dense metallic guitars in place of the thin riffing characteristic of the Sisters, Rosetta Stone, The Mission or whomever. But the formula is basically the same as the aforementioned bands, but with a contemporary edge. These two tracks in particular show Moonspell’s most creative synthesis of their two favoured styles, in a new and refreshing way they never have before. Truly modern Gothic Rock and to those critics and jaded music fans that continue to dismiss band’s like Moonspell as a nothing more than an adolescent metal band still fail to recognize these elements, I suppose they never really understood Goth Rock. I suppose it’s their loss, as it has been for ten years.
Moonspell bring the album to a rich and entrancing close with “As We Eternally Sleep On It,” another epic track with shimmering guitar chords paired with urgent guitar melodies and driving authoritative rhythms. The song is powerfully energized with some subtly gripping melodies and strong dynamic key shifts, ultimately serving as another remarkable highlight both for this new disc and for the band overall. The Antidote is one of Moonspell’s strongest and most fully realized releases yet, with moments of raw straightforward aggression but tempered tastefully by a sophisticated passion. Personally, it rivals the position of “The Butterfly Effect” as my second favourite album of theirs (“Irreligious” serving as my favourite simply for how monumental a release it was back in 1995 and how much ‘fun’ it is years later). When comparing this material to the band’s groundbreaking early work, The Antidote sounds as though it was produced by a much more focused and mature group of musicians. They have indeed grown over the years, while many of their contemporaries continue to rehash or reinterpret ideas and new bands just fail outright and miss the point of Gothic Metal altogether. The band’s artistic development can definitely be perceived and ultimately, this is one solid and engrossing release from a band that will hopefully have many years of growth and excellence ahead of them.
Tracks:
1.) In And Above Men
2.) From Lowering Skies
3.) Everything Invaded
4.) The Southern Deathstyle
5.) Antidote
6.) Capricorn At Her Feet
7.) Lunar Still
8.) A Walk On The Darkside
9.) Crystal Gazing
10.) As We Eternally Sleep
On It
Bonus Video: Everything Invaded
Moonspell is:
Fernando Ribeiro – vocals
Ricardo Amorim – guitars
Pedro Paixão- keys,
samplers, guitars
Mike Gaspar - drums
Moonspell - Official Site:
http://www.moonspell.com
Century Media Records:
http://www.centurymedia.com
Mystic Circle
Wings Of Death (Massacre)
~reviewed by Uncle
Nemesis
I’m off my usual musical territory here. Normally, I just don’t do Metal. And I *definitely* don’t do ‘Dark Satanic Metal’, which, it seems, is the chosen musical style of Mystic Circle. But this single showed up in my promo-stack, so I reckoned I’d give it a whirl. What the hell, I thought, appropriately enough. Let’s dip into the metal zone for once and see what’s going on.
Not being an expert in this area, I first went to the band’s website for some background and context, and as a result of these researches I can tell you the following about Mystic Circle:
The band was originally formed by bassist/vocalist Graf von Beelzebub (possibly not his real name) and a drummer called Aaarrrgon - which sounds to me like the noise you make when you hit your thumb with a hammer. However, I’m sure that those versed in the arcana of the Satanic path will instantly divine a deep meaning behind these names. Over the years, many different musicians have passed through the band, all of them bearing amusing ‘gang names’ (let’s big it up for Baalsulgorr!), all of them festoooned in decorative leather gear, like they’d just come back from fancy dress night at the Mineshaft, and all with hilarious inch-thick make-up. All of this makes me chuckle at the absurd, OTT theatricality of the band - surely Mystic Circle are a great, ironic joke?
Not so, it seems. Or, if the band *is* a joke, they’ve certainly mastered the art of showing a poker face to the world. The website gives the impression that Mystic Circle take their schtick very, very, seriously. The purpose of the band, apparently, is to make ‘anti-Christian music’ - although quite why Mystic Circle think that Christians will discern any particular threat in a bunch of grown men with silly made-up names, amusingly camp leather outfits, and make-up which looks like they’ve been playing with mum’s cosmetics box while she’s out at the shops, is really quite baffling. Personally, I have seen more threatening children’s entertainers.
This release is rather surprisingly described as a ‘club single’, which led me to expect a strange collision between metal and some sort of dancefloor synthpop groove. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) the music here is not some unholy cross between Satanic metal and God’s own EBM. In fact, it’s pretty much straight down the line proggy metal, leavened with a giant wall of almost glam-rock guitar (nice axework there from our man Ezpharess), thunderous, powerhouse drumming (big props to sticksman Necrodemon) and those twin male/female vocals which seem to be a standard component of metal these days. Herr von Beelzebub himself handles the male vocal chores, and - stop me if this doesn’t come as a complete surprise - essentially goes ‘Hhhhuuuurrrraaaawwwwwggghhh! Wwwuuuuurrrgghhh! Aaarraaawwaagh!’ throughout. The female vocalist (again, this may not amount to an astounding revelation) has one of those choirgirl-on-helium vocal styles. In short, it’s all pretty much as you’d expect. Mystic Circle, for all their apocalyptic imagery, are obviously not too bothered about blazing any dramatic trails through new territory. They make a very familiar modern metal noise. I’m just a little puzzled as to why the female vocalist doesn’t get a namecheck on either the single sleeve, or even the website. Maybe she’s got a name which just doesn’t fit in with the boys, like Emma, or Jane, or Nelly.
But there you have it - straightforward modern metal with a rather absurd overlay of cartoon-Satanic imagery. Still, the band do seem to take it all frightfully seriously, and, since they seem to be fairly successful in their home territory of Germany, I assume they must’ve attracted an audience which is prepared to suspend disbelief and accept all the foolish posturing at face value. But I bet their audience is predominantly male, and, on average, aged around 14. This is music for adolescent boys who are going through their ‘I hate everything!’ phase, and who haven’t *quite* got to grips with their sexuality. For those of us who’ve moved on, Mystic Circle are nothing but an occasionally amusing irrelevance.
If I were Satan, frankly I’d be embarrassed.
The tunestack:
Wings Of Death
Wings Of Death (single version)
The players:
Graf von Beelzebub: Bass,
vocals
Ezpharess: Guitar
Necrodemon: Drums
Nelly: Vocals
The website: http://www.mysticcircle.de
Reviewed by Uncle Nemesis: http://www.nemesis.to
Naglfar
Diabolical
~reviewed by Eric
Rasmussen
"Horncrowned Majesty" kicks this album off with a klaxon wail, a powerful riff, a majestic melody, an obligatory vocal "bleeararghghhh" and pummeling drums. The other 8 tracks follow suit, although most of the songs distinguish themselves from the pack, and nice atmospheric touches and piano will throw you into disequilibrium and liven up the music listening experience. You'd almost never know that Diabolical is a reissue from 1998, unless you've been following the career of Sweden's Naglfar.
Naglfar plays the same sort of dark majestic/medieval/fantasy metal that Dissection was known for, but without any of the moral quandaries that arise when good-hearted metal fans learn of Dissection's sordid past and muse on whether or not listening to such evil music might cast them into a Faustian downward spiral of sin and debauchery. Man, that was a long sentence. But I'm approaching this review in the way the CD approaches music, and that involves getting right to the point and then beating it over your head, running you over, and giving you barely enough breathing room to make it through alive.
The band's chief fault is their lack of strong melodic content. Nice guitar leads are present, but they never evoke anything beyond "neat riff", and thus won't compel you to perform ritual dances and burn churches or anything Dissection might have favored. Nevertheless, the neat riffs are plentiful and ass-kicking, so Diabolical is quite a fine melodic death metal listen for the black metal fan. The emphasis is on strong atmosphere and violent moods instead of the technical but emotionally depleted style that their country mates usually employ (see: In Flames or most any other melodic death metal band).
I do not think that Diabolical quite reaches the level of Dissection's output, but then, Dissection outputs no longer. If you want something new in that style, you'll have to go to Naglfar, and their music is definitely worth your time. They're kind of like a really good sugar substitute, where Dissection is sugar. Everyone tells you to cut back on sugar, and you know it's not good for you. If you haven't developed an addiction for it already, better to avoid the temptation and grab the nearly flawless substitute - Naglfar's Diabolical - instead.
Track List:
1. Horncrowned Majesty
2. Embracing The Apocalypse
3. 12th Rising
4. Into The Golden Void
Of Eternity
5. The Brimstone Gate
6. Blades
7. When Autumn Storms Come
8. A Departure In Solitude
9. Diabolical--The Devil's
Child
Naglfar is:
Andreas Nilsson - lead &
rhythm guitars
Jens Rydén - vocals
Kristoffer "Wrath" Olivius
- bass & backing vocals
Mattias Grahn - drums
Marcus "Vargher" Norman
- lead & rhythm guitar
Naglfar - Official Site:
http://www.naglfar.net/
Regain Records:
http://www.regainrecords.com/
The End Records (US):
http://www.theendrecords.com/
Orion
songs for the goddess
(Shuteye Agency &
Records)
~reviewed by Blu
Sometimes I think I shouldn't read press sheets. I often wonder how much they serve to bias my opinion before I hear the music. It seems though, that after 5 years of reading one sheets, the worse the one sheet, the worse the music. Take this for instance: "Orion is a gothic rock poet who is enchanted by splendour of life in its many light and dark shades. His desire is to elevate the life experience to a divine height and a unique sacredness (Not unlike the ancient Greek and Roman writers of the golden age)." Uh huh. Lofty ambitions.
So following that idea, you have track one, "The Sage," which starts you off in a predictable direction - exotic flute and clashing symbols. And that might be slightly entertaining except that it just plods along. And along. And along. Thump, thump thump. And I'm easily distracted.
But wait, there's more. Also on the one sheet he makes this miraculous turn in direction by saying, "By the close observation of the sounds of the late Beatles, Rolling Stones, Zeppelin, and T-Rex recordings, Orion strives to give his musical productions a timeless and ageless feel..." and then there's something about a "vibrant rhythm section."
Which leads me to track two, "Aphrodite," and here's where the 70's hippy rock comes in with rudimentary rock'n'roll guitar solos panging away in the background but that's not the worst part about this track. The worst part is the tin tat-a-tat-tat of the drums who sound as if they coming from the bedroom down the hall. I swear I'm having flash backs from Hair.
And from there it spirals down into a 70's hippy rock nightmare. "Alpheus And Aretheusa" make me feel like I should be high and waving tye-dyed head bands around. I think Orion forgot to mention Jefferson Airplane in their list of heroes. I really am quite taken back by just HOW retro this sounds. And the following tracks are nearly all the same with a nod of difference going to "Dance of Sufis" which has a more modern feel and primarily relies on the synth to produce "exotic" sounding melodies. It's rather elementary and simple sounding but a breath of fresh air compared to the other songs. Oh, and props for using a REAL violin on tack 11 - "The Lovers."
The lyrics are sadly as predictable - lots of "Flowers for thou," "Your aura is all I can breathe" and "Like silver moonlight her lips touch my sight." They make me think of the bad poetry my girl friends wrote when we were in 8th grade. Technically the production on this is horrid. The drumming sounds muffled, the synths are way too loud and up front but on a positive note, he sings on key.
I guess what puzzles me the most is how and why this earned the "goth" tag. There's nothing goth about it... not musically, thematically or lyrically. I'm sure there's a market for this stuff - somewhere - just not here.
www.platinumpalace.biz
www.shuteyerecords.com
POPOI SDIOH
POPOI SDIOH
(Nerves Productions)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
How the fuck do I know how to pronounce it?!! I haven’t got a clue, and technically the album’s title is some weird symbol they’ve stuck on it, which isn’t exactly helping things, but be not afraid of any of this because, while they may have their audiocrashtests poked inbetween certain tracks, which are instrumental maladies, the vast majority of the record is excellence of a very rare kind.
Have you noticed one reaction to the bright, light, bubbly and somewhat inconsequential electro and orthodox (as in rock) parts of the Industrial scene, now that they’re so well established? Some people are going back to the early 80’s, where Post-Punk meant lean energy and strength of character? That’s what we have happening here, but with the added bonus of the modern day studio trickery and textures.
This band have experience. Their weird name was what they started out with before becoming Land Of Passion, and three of those LOP chaps carry on here, with one new member. And they’re exuberantly wild.
Interested? You should be, because in ‘The Horror Show’ you have an amazing song, which is like ‘Only Theater Of Pain’ meets ‘In A Flat Field’, okay? It’s that good!!! Okay, it does go on a bit at five and a half minutes, when at four it could have had an emphatic ending and true classic status, but God it’s powerful; the song teeming with scratchy guitar life, subtle soft touches and sneering vocal venom. Simply brilliant.
The album’s like that overall, really; stuffed full of confidence and allure. No venal searching for the past, but a return to basics, mixed with a keen eye on the future. ‘Radioneighbour’ is migraine-made-music, pounding, then still, pounding, then still there. An inventive arsenal of sounds creep forward and you’d be right to be wary. As with most of their tracks it is richly detailed when you listen closely, but it also has a central thrust of power which hits you first and foremost.
They vary things, and flicker delicately with ‘Mudcover’, tense in a stop/start (think Sex Gang) manner, which rumbles and jolts along, with the muted coruscations of ‘Wanawana’, then they go for trad 80’s Goth Rock in ‘Mikawa & Skarpeta’ but with almost jovial vocal jousting and brutal splashy music, a bit like finding a drunken warthog in your bath.
They’re also ridiculously inventive, so that while ‘Psychogame’ seems like a nervous, low-sprung percussive exercise, it then skips into a twisted chorus of pure class, and ‘Braa’ is a playful waltz for madmen with too many Kurt Weil songs in their head. Only ‘Great God Pan’ comes off badly among these songs, lacking cohesion, but conjuring up more Bauhaus comparisons, and where some bands would just sound weird and redundant, the wild soiree that is ‘f + f’ is somehow supremely buoyant rock.
‘Crick In The Head’ could be voices of the dead, followed by an angry drummer, a shout of ‘Fuck!’ and guitar skulduggery, but it certainly ends up as jittery, slobbering mess, and right towards the end you also begin to notice fine vocal performances, even if you do need to excavate them from the musical mayhem which gyrates along. ‘Kuna Vaka’ and ‘Pimples & Flies’ both have beautiful vocals trapped between their poisoned wafers, and both songs positively swagger, casually crazed, before the vivaciously vitriolic ‘Freaks’ spins off into the night, shrieking to itself.
I think you probably know by now that I am never one for gushing compliments, so believe me when I say this is an utterly wonderful record, truly inspired, imaginative and addictive. A total triumph.
RADIONEIGHBOUR
MUDCOVER
THE HORROR SHOW
WANAWANA
MIKAWA & SKARPETA
PSYCHOGAME
GREAT GOD PAN
BRAA
F + F
CRICK IN THE HEAD
KUNA VAKA
PIMPLES & FLIES
FREAKLS
http://www.nerves.net
(currently in development, with just news, newsletter – well worth going
for - and contact details)
PSYCHO D-VEIN
DUST FEAR OF LOVER
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
When is an electronically-dominated band not experimental or electro? When it’s an Italian chap named Death Boy who does the ‘voices and noises’ himself. When is it sometimes hard to write a review without sounding overly critical and unnecessarily harsh? When there’s such clear potential which is being strangled too early.
I could be wrong, as the website mentions two people, but this latest of their releases mentions only Death Boy, and he needs mates, a fuller production and has to relinquish the production controls, handing them to someone who knows how to produce. Too many times there are signs of really classy ideas which are allowed to plateau rather than rising through the gears to deliver astonishing results. He crafts his music well, but is clearly limited by his situation, and while I don’t know the band Chrisma, and can’t therefore see if his version of ‘Black Silk Stockings’ differs from theirs, I somehow doubt they had the same muggy vocals which sound hesitant and lacking melodic durability. It has a nice early Fad Gadget feel, mixed with The Normal, and the album’s penultimate track is a shaky, tremulous cover of Joy Division’s ‘Decades’, which is clearly a strong influence as willowy bass incisions occur regularly throughout the album.
So there he/they mainly is/are, back in the 80’s where the sound is lean, and the solid electric nature mainly goes for spacey techno suggestiveness, but the songs always remain well grounded and fairly serious. It’s really just a question of pondering the empty spaces which one person creates. So many of the songs, like the lanky, bounding punky thing which is ‘Sonic Wave’ should have finished in a shower of drum-fuelled sparks, but instead glows gently. ‘Dust’ degenerates into a mangled mess, where a band could have given it strong curves, and the vocals ruin ‘Too Low’ which has a stylish bass presence and hovering synth.
At least his/their options are there. Stop pretending to sing, because the vocals are a waste of space, and work with a good singer, who can maybe play another instrument, or produce? Make it a duo? Be an instrumentalist and drop the energy kick? Or get a band where he’s the main songwriter? It’s got to be better than persevering with this, and just pottering along with good notions which never become full-blooded.
‘Unliked Love’ moves from
sci-fi soundscape into a dark storm, ‘Screaming’ is ghostly and yet purposeful,
and ‘Screaming’ has fine attitude and tense percussion,
so the basics are all here.
It’s just a question of whether Death Boy wants to keep this as a hobby,
or get involved with others and really let his music achieve something.
Not much help to you, but then I don’t speak Italian. There’s good stuff on the record, but it could be so much better. Fans of early 80’s electronics may enjoy the mp3s online, so visit the site.
BLACK SILK STOCKING
AROUND
SONIC WAVE
DUST
TOO LOW
NAZI MAN
UNLIKED LOVE
SCREAMING
HAPPY
PLASTIC CAGE
DECADES
V.U.
Radio Berlin
Glass
~reviewed by Matthew
Heilman
Radio Berlin formed in Vancouver in 1998, and Glass marks the band’s third full-length release. The album was released last summer, and yet again, it has taken me an unprecedented amount of time to review it. But as with other releases, I have had ample time to digest and immerse myself within the material, and having returned to the disc now in the attempt to articulate my thoughts for a review, I feel like I am returning to a classic that has been a staple in my record collection for years. Glass has been deeply ingrained within my psyche and musical memory banks. It is truthfully that good and ranks that high.
Radio Berlin’s sound is a proud individualization of classic Goth Rock and renewed Post Punk and Indie elements. The band is comfortably in league with active bands such as Turn Pale, The Rapture, and Interpol but also with old school bands like New Model Army, Public Image Ltd. and Killing Joke. Again, I hate resorting to genre terminology and band comparisons but Radio Berlin do not seem to shy away from such comparisons and proudly proclaim their influences. They, like Turn Pale and Swann Danger are eager to draw attention to the elements of classic dark alternative music that was brushed under the carpet for many years. And I for one have already expressed enough times how thankful I am for bands like this.
Radio Berlin’s sound is immense, thick and resonates deeply with hefty groove oriented percussion, hard hitting and rhythmic bass lines, sharp acidic guitar tones and peculiar synthetic accents that often bleed into modulations of blissful, harmonic feedback. There is as much atmosphere as there is muscle, a result primarily of Jack Duckworth’s emotive vocals. Jack voice is a voice that is certainly far from flawed. The catches and vocal misfires are what accentuate the band’s raw emotive appeal. A hazy, strained grace permeates his voice with lively bursts of nervy, excited shouts. “Gauze,” perhaps one of the most addictive songs I heard throughout 2003, perfectly sets the CD in motion. Characterized foremost by a bobbing ‘death disco’ beat that slithers beneath shrill guitar doodlings and the ringing of thorny deconstructed chords, the song is a grand, voluptuous slab of decadent groove, offering a brief wistful interlude of hypnotic synth drones before exploding back into the shuffling stomp of the song’s main memorable riff. Absolutely awesome - THIS is how you kick off a CD!
“A Suitcase” is initially a much calmer track, with percussive bass thumps building into a swirling chorus before bouncing into a crashing whirlwind of a climax. A wonderful exploration of dynamics, the song is at once melodic and underscored with an unmistakable raw energy. “The Hyphen” is a drum driven jam, with cascades of tribal drums at the forefront, tempered by brooding synths and a bass line that continually spiral and descend downward as the drums disjointedly push forward. A mindfuck of a song, it also manages to retain a melodic appeal in the vocals despite its uneven, disorienting rhythmic cadences. “D.E.S.” appears next, immediately showcasing a tight propulsive bass line with retro synths and angular guitar jabs punctuating the rigid up-tempo drumming. The song is fervently pushed around a breakneck curve to reach an urgent sweltering chorus, only to return to the taut guitar/synth interplay. They even manage to seamlessly incorporate tolling church bells at the end of the song, subtle enough to prevent distraction, but Goth As Fuck regardless. A wonderful polygamous marriage of New Wave, Indie, and classic Goth chic.
“Rote Lippen” kicks off with tight punchy rhythms and distorted bass providing a melodic backbone, fused with pinched guitar accents before bursting into a half-shouted, bellowing chorus, enlivened by raw vocal techniques. The song shuffles into a breakdown, a tad on the fringe of the psychedelic with a whole lot of Interpol going on. The song closes with a more frenetic drum pattern to perhaps set the stage for what could be regarded as the album’s epic track, “Aftermath.” When I first heard this disc last summer, this is the song that outright blew me away. The drumming is exquisite from start to finish, forging forward from its doleful intro into a complex but propulsive couple of verses, crashing into the best New Model Army breakdown that never was, and into a shuffling, swelling gloom before cascading back into a more intensified pleading vocal lamentation. The whole thing is brought to a rather foreboding and hypnotic close, with more church organs echoing mournfully and fading into one another. The song is breathtaking, immaculately structured, with a perfect momentum and some of the coolest rhythmic dynamics I have heard in recent years.
“Knives” is another masterpiece, beginning with slack disjointed guitar straight from the world of vintage Killing Joke, before tumbling into a beautifully discordant piano led windfall of sound, the drums pounding and accentuating the rhythmic cadences of Jack’s beseeching vocals. The song shows the band at the peak of their controlled, hushed melodic frenzy, refined and chaotic, blissful and confrontational. Though rooted deeply in the past triumphs of classic dark alternative bands, compositions such as this attest for Radio Berlin’s progressive sensibility, and demonstrates their success at revitalizing a classic sound for contemporary audiences that thought that they have seen and heard it all before.
The plodding, murky track “How Fast Can You Run?” brings the disc to a reflective and moderately claustrophobic close. Delayed echo guitars, a lulling bass line and slow percussive effects predominantly characterize the song, crowned by muffled yet insistent vocal melodies. The raw, vulnerable off-key style in which the verses are sung immediately made me think of Theatre Of Hate, while the music sounds like one of the more psychedelic moments from Wire or perhaps even Danse Society. It’s a fantastic close, exciting in its dreariness and reverberated urgency.
Radio Berlin is definitely one of the most exciting bands that were brought to my attention last year, and if they continue to develop as they have, they are a band that has the potential to be revered in twenty years in the same manner that their influences are revered currently. With a US tour planned for the spring with Turn Pale (later joined by The Prids on the West Coast) they are band that I can only suspect have a live show to rival their studio recordings. Tentative dates for the tour are below, but check the band’s website for confirmations or additions. Lastly, the band has also had its first two releases “Sibling” and “The Selection Drone” re-released by Action Driver records this past month. So things are happening for the band, and I hope that I am not the only one listening! Check them out on tour, and definitely check out the band’s releases.
Track List:
1.) Gauze
2.) A Suitcase
3.) The Hyphen
4.) D.E.S.
5.) Rote Lippen
6.) Aftermath
7.) Knives
8.) How Fast Can You Run?
Radio Berlin is:
Jack Duckworth – guitars,
vocals, keyboards
Chris Frey – bass, vocals
Lyndsay Sung – keyboards,
piano, mellotron
Joshua Wells – drums, synth
percussion, guitar, keyboards
Radio Berlin – Official Site:
http://www.radio-berlin.com
Action Driver Records:
http://www.actiondriver.com
RECTOR SCANNER
VOCODER (Pandailectric)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
Ordinarily I’d mutter a metaphorical ‘help me out’, what with this being electronic music allied to dance, but I have enough common sense to see what’s what. I know little about it, but anyone can see if it’s working, if it’s new, and if it has potential. In this case that’s no, no and yes.
The problem with electronic music, and especially somewhat sombre German attempts at dance-related music is that in works about effectively as mid-90’s Goth did in the UK when bands started saying they were going a bit dance, and then simply tried varying the drum machine and adding more keyboards. It couldn’t hope to convince, any more than this one man outfit (winningly named Agro) has given himself the best of chances.
The title – Vocoder. Now there’s a term which no longer holds any interest. A song entitled ‘World Wide Web’, and artwork of plugs and sockets? It’s reducing the music to its blandest components, and any actual interface with an audience’s desires. Electronic music, and especially dance music of this more faceless variety, works best when it’s pounding, or mysterious, and RS’s music is plainly efficient, if rather hollow examples of the genre, but they’re not bad, by any means. He comes out with crisp, spacious, sweeping music, but seems to believe they’re songs, which they aren’t. They’re an idea, mainly a rhythm with some optimistic attempt at melodies, but don’t have the fluidity true dances needs. To establish variety and give these songs a dynamic Agro does what Dance Remixes on 1980’s 12 inchers used to do where they’d suddenly stick in a drum-based segment and then allow the first verses to follow on, and fade. He starts a song off, then drops it all back down again, then just inflates the ending. Predictable.
That isn’t a song, it’s a track, and employing treated vocals may be a standard ploy, but in this case it falls particularly flat because the natural voice used, while hardly attractive, is ten times better than the fictitious one which is mechanoid, and therefore lacking in life, which flattens the music out. Voices bring life to electronics, where electronic voices just neutralise. This is a mistake composers makes all the fucking time and it’s about time the learned the stupidity of such a basic error. It is quite impossible to give to an electronically created voice any sense of character, and who in the right mind thinks, “hmmm, for this song I think I’ll require vocals utterly devoid of character”? Eh?
So there’s a little lesson for Agro. Your own voice isn’t good enough, so get yourself a singer, because then you can respond to how the voice creates something out of the music, and not the other way round. Certain tracks have plenty of ideas going on which demand further embellishment and warmth and then you can really show us what you’re capable of. Any 80’s tinged effects just make it seem rather desperate, like the tectonic sounds in ‘Herz Aus Eis’ which we haven’t enjoyed since Depeche Mode’s trite ‘People Are People’, or whatever it was called.
Musically , the frantic ‘Popstar’ has plenty of life, the title track is full of splintered rhythmic spleen, and ‘Fiever’ is quite mad, even if it’s old school techno, and the opener really held out high hopes, being the kind of thing you’d love to have on the walkman while wandering round town. ‘WWW’ had certain Xmal-esque ghosts about it, as ‘Kunstwelt’ had some ethereal wispiness which intrigued. ‘Ozean’ is stroppy, ‘Spielzeug’ quite arty, tattered and drawn, so it’s not like it’s got blandness stamped through it. Agro just doesn’t have the vocal vision, and that’s what happens with solo projects, you can’t expect people to know everything, or to see whether their music has truly focussed relevance. Bring in a singer and many things change, and that’s clearly what’s needed here.
The main problem I have with such music is that it sound too clean, if that makes any sense? I can always grow to like it, or admire the precision, provided it’s startling, and with Rector Scanner it’s currently a touch too sterile.
EWIGKEIT (PROLOG)
WORLD WIDE WEB
DU HAST GEGLAUST
KUNSTWELT
OZEAN
SPIELZEUG
EUPHORIA
MAGNETENWALD
POPSTAR
VOCODER
FIEBER
HERZ AUS EIS
POPSTAR (EPILOG)
http://www.rector-scanner.de
http://www.pandailectric.de
Seethings
Parallels
~reviewed by Eric
Rasmussen
A brief rant will now ensue.
You know what really ticks me off? It's the metal scene's acceptance of nu-metal, that bastardized rock/rap hybrid crap that saturates the airwaves with its whining and insignificant filth. Yet at every turn once respected metal bands shed their sound to fit this popular new style. In Flames tours with Slipknot, Meshuggah goes mellow and heads to Ozz Fest, metal reviewers dare to give positive reviews to underground bands that mimic the radio crap. You're just encouraging them! They'll just make more! This genre should have died long ago.
And now, our feature presentation.
The most amazing thing about Seethings is the vocalist. Not his ability - the vocals are crap. They're whiny and angsty in a way that has become boringly typical. No, what's amazing is who's doing the vocals: Lawrence Mackrory. The ex-Darkane vocalist. The guy who was doing vocals so extreme that some listeners found it revolting. I mean, obviously the guy had some anger issues, and if it wasn't 3 am, I might have enough sense left in me to realize I should talk about him in nicer terms.
So why does an extreme metal musician like that decide to front a new nu-metal band? In all honesty, I do not know. Seethings sounds a lot like Linkin Park. Same whiny, pathetic vocalizing, but there are at least some moments of Tool-ishness, or parts of songs that call to mind better eras of radio rock. Silly nu-metal riffs and simplistic drum beats accompany the angsty verbal grumbling, though oddly there is no bass (sometimes nu-metal is bass heavy to a ridiculous extreme).
I cannot fully condemn Seethings, but only for two reasons. 1) They have just enough generic but acceptable rock in them to not be completely intolerable, and 2) I hate nu-metal vocalists more for their faked extremity than anything, and Mr. Mackrory is at least an honestly angry man. Regardless, this CD is generic, and much of it makes me want to use sentences like "it's crappity crap of the crappiest crappy crap". Only fans of recent radio rock or nu-metal need apply.
Track List:
01. Release
02. Slow Healer
03. Navian
04. Elevate
05. Good For Nothing
06. Falling
07. Isotone
08. Ascending
09. Succumb
10. This Hole
11. Tonight
12. Illuminate Me
13. Parallels
Seethings is:
Lawrence Mackrory - Vocals
Simon Wettervik - Drums
Dennis Olsson - Guitars
Peter Waites - Guitars
Seethings - Official Site:
http://www.seethingsonline.com/
Scarlet Records:
http://www.scarletrecords.it/
The End Records (US):
http://www.theendrecords.com/
Seven Seraphim
Believe in Angels
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
I bet there are a lot of metal musicians in the Society for Creative Anachronism, as they sure do seem to enjoy resurrecting long dead styles and techniques from the days of yore. Believe in Angels is, itself, a creative anachronism, melding the guitar-god flash and glam sensibilities of the 80's with symphonic powermetal straight from the heart of Europe. If Van Halen had spent their formative years listening to Helloween, I'm betting their eventual musical output would have borne a distinct resemblance to Seven Seraphim's debut album, Believe in Angels.
Andrew Szucs's wild flights of fancy guitar noodling vie with Greg Hupp's over-the-top, theatrical vocals through nearly all of the album, each trying to overload your senses with their mad skills. Nonstop rapidfire solo runs abound, the likes of which haven't been heard 'round these parts since grunge killed the guitar god. Hupp matches the sheer whacko intensity and scope of the guitar solos with his mid-to-high pitched (but not earsplitting) whirr of a voice, but Szucs steals the show.
Backed by symphonic keyboards and solid songwriting straight out of Melrose Place (or wherever all that glam metal came from), Szucs's guitar ramblings threaten to burn through his fretboard on more than one occasion. While not artistically in the same class as Bumblefoot or the late Shawn Lane (or any of the rest of the cream of the crop of electric guitar virtuosos), Szucs certainly has the technical skills to get there if he keeps improving. An album like Believe in Angels could easily veer unrecoverably into the realm of cheese. The 80's were not a time of high art when it came to metal music... but sheer manic energy and technical excellence can pull off just about anything they're applied too. Maybe even industrial country rap metal. I hope nobody tries that, though, for all our sakes.
Seven Seraphim, thankfully, have chosen a wholly easier genre to conquer. In fact, they have no competition, so I can truthfully say they are the best power-80s-glam-o-metal act around. I got a huge kick out of Believe in Angels since it is enjoyable in both a nostalgic and technical sense. The songs are well constructed, the riffs catchy, and the solos are enthrallingly dexterous. The 'under-21' set may not be able to hearken back to old times like we aged geezers can, but anyone who appreciates blazing guitars (and doesn't hate the earnestly goofy and ebullient sensibilities of the previous century's 9th decade) should thoroughly enjoy Seven Seraphim's new offering.
Track List:
01.) Atmosphere Collide
02.) Anastasia
03.) Lady Jade
04.) Song Blaque
05.) Dance in the Red
06.) The Discordant
07.) The Rain Keeps Falling
(Thru Rose Coloured Glass)
08.) Cyanide by Moonlight
09.) The Hand that Feeds
10.) A Prayer for the Innocents
Seven Seraphim is:
Greg Hupp - Vocals
Andrew Szucs - Guitars
Chris Simpson - Bass
Brian Harris - Drums
Scarlet Records:
http://www.scarletrecords.it/
The End Records (US Distribution):
http://www.theendrecords.com
SEVENTH HARMONIC
PROMISE OF SACRIFICE
(First Light)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
There are some things bands never need to say without subconsciously weakening their self-belief. We have all grown used to, and depressed by, Goth bands who suddenly scramble to step verbally sideways from what they believe to be a negative term, when shrewd use of their dwindling brain power would make them realise they’re more successful within the scene than outside. Now the Ethereal tag seems to cause discomfort. In a Starvox interview Seventh Harmonic were seen to be amiably muddled over whether Goth or Ethereal were something pertinent. The thing to remember is that bands saying they don’t like to be pigeonholed or having journalists put them in a box is more than literally wrong (I have certainly never shoved any human being into a box throughout my entire life), it’s pointless.
Ethereal is actually a well respected term which covers anything from the medieval feel, particularly the Gaelic classical approach, on through modern classical. It is a term which can be proudly proclaimed for its very credible aesthetics, and can then be appropriated by the listener who can use it as an indication whether this might be for them with some accuracy, whereas Goth can be such a wide reference. And Seventh Harmonic are Ethereal with a Capital Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhh. They’re not heavy or adventurous enough to be Ambient, and even dead mechanics would laugh at any Industrial suggestions, so that’s what they are and where they are. And they do it well.
The drawback to Ethereal is that it could be a modern day hippy folk tag for people with decent software at home, that can be built up into impressive, almost orchestral displays with wan, mystic vocals and lyrics. It’s one form of music which can sound irresistibly artistic and yet could mean absolutely sod all, because the lyrics can be wholly trite nonsense, and it is hard with such slender melodic means to create great variety. Seventh Harmonic, who can do it live, have had severe line-ups problems but there’s still a central feel to it all, with some rather pointless offshoots here and there.
It isn’t a dark album, or a dank one, and I was never really dragged deeper into the music by any of the lyrics, which are infuriatingly obtuse or bland, but the surface, which is what they really offer is light, and comes into delightful layers, with little odd shocks strewn along the way, more often than not with a twinge of Eastern influence, but also something quite odd being involved.
They can have a serene flow, as with ‘Page Of Wands’ with a curdled interior into which you sink; appearing quite luxurious, but also clumsy at times, which banishes suggestions of easy listening or background. ‘Pass Within’ is Noggin The Nog music, vocals seeping in like gas, very romantic, and the title track could be re-titled When Wind Chimes Go To War; bitter sweet music, light, normal singing.
‘The Third Chamber; is twittery drivel, but ‘Icaruus’ is excitingly poppy and sounds like a British Airways ad (watch out Ladysmith Black Mambazo, you could have competition!) with fizzy effects rather masking the vocals. ‘Inside The Circle’ is slow and brooding, the mood playing against a dragged beat, leaving some mundane lyrics badly exposed, but it’s nicely done. Then the Ancient Greek employed by guests Daemonia Nymphe comes in like a weird incantation, and away they groan, dreamy or dreary according to taste, following this bilious undertow with intriguing keyboards and a demented collision of dramatic whispers through ‘Immortal Selene’
If you can have air-brushed music that would be ‘To The Mother Of Gods’, which maintains grace while flickering in a disjointed fashion, before they move into stranger clanky sounds for ‘Parasina’ and just when they vocals seem ready to cut loose they curl up and remain sleepy, then it ends with mendacious murmurs and dark touches that leave you decidedly impressed.
I’ll have another of their albums reviewed at the end of the week as they kindly sent two, and they certainly deserve coverage.
DE TERRA FONS EXORITUR
CHAINS
PAGE OF WANDS
PASS WITHIN
PROMISE OF SACRIFICE
THE THIRD CHAMBER
ICARUS
BUTTERFLY KISS
INSIDE THE CIRCLE
IMMORTAL SELENE
TO THE MOTHER OF GODS
PARISINA
A SHIP, DREAMING
THE FOURTH CHAMBER
http://vzone.virgin.net/seventh.harmonic
SEVENTH HARMONIC
THE ASCENT
(First Light)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
A lot more modern than their recent seriously ethereal 'Promise' album , this is a kind of all-purpose home Goth record. You'd surely never listen to it as a precursor for a wild night out, but at all other times it fills your room quite beautifully, and isn't so saccharine sweet as to be pungently perfumed and drowsy. If anything it is a little mental, bordering on the weird.
With a bullish, booming opening and a hint of grandeur it just slings the most obvious comparisons at you during 'Inside' where a dramatic pulsing opening seems all set for Eurobeat glory when it switches in an instant to an astonishingly accurate Julianne Regan impersonation, then morphs madly into very early Kate Bush. Heathcliff!Given that much quality can be found between those two artists anyway, and that Seventh Harmonic are nothing if not exquisitely detailed in their compositions, you either know right now if this emotional dovetailing and picturesque froth is going to be for you, or not. If you like your music slightly fey, frosted and romantic it's got to be seriously worth considering. It remains quite beautiful throughout, with more than enough subtle twists to keep you guessing, and more than enough garbled, mysterious vocal phrasings for you to develop a second career as a pyschic in unravelling whatever the Hell they're on about.
The title track is a perfect example of maudlin miasma, with music which hints of a time when men were men and all but the lowest born women were ladies, and bad manners were simply beastly. Parasols and promenades, performed in palladian style. In 'You Sleep' they have suitably sombre tones balanced with high, pretty twinges, for nothing is ever harrowing in their landscapes, everything is sweetly metered and matched. Vocals oscillate in their mysticism before the synth winds snatch them up and toss them away.
Musically they go for a little overt adventure sometimes, as in 'Paralysis' with woozy (backwards?) passages acting as underlay for delicately feverish vocals, and it's a compellingly smeared entity, as there's a luxurious nightmare/brainstorm element to some of this, like inspired abstract musing, followed by a well named 'The Dream' with a music box cacophony, a tricky beat and anti-climactic end. Nemeth sidles in for 'Transformation' and does his lustily enigmatc thing as the woman sighs, enchantingly, and probabaly passes out.
They're deep, warm and languid for 'Swansong', entrancing with more Bush outtakes in 'B.C.' (I prefer the more naturalistic vocal drama of 'Firedance'), exploring an arty expanse of noise during 'The Sea' and enjoying a final burst of pace with 'The Reflection', which carries its historical element high; modestly modern, but decently dry. Think female highwayman (sic) and you've got the feel. Think thoroughyly interesting and you've grasped the appeal.
A band like should have every chance of enjoying the status the Cocteaus once held in the 80's.
INTRO: FIRST-BORN
INSIDE
THE ASCENT/REQUIEM
FIREDANCE
YOU SLEEP
THE SUN, THE SEA
PARALYSIS
THE DREAM/THE EXODUS
TRANSFORMATION
B.C.
SWANSONG
THE SEARCH
THE REFLECTION
http://freespace.virgin.net/seventh.harmonic/
Space Odyssey
Embrace The Galaxy
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
Apparently, Jan. 2004 is 'Shredding For All You're Worth' month, as -not one, but two- guitar-god shredfests have arrived from the far edge of the universe. Reviewed elsewhere in StarVox this month is Seven Seraphim's Believe in Angels, featuring guitar prodigy Andrew Szucs, but this review covers Space Odyssey's cosmic crash course in 'how to play guitar scales at faster than light speed'. Fortunately, Mamlsteenian noodling isn't the only fuel propelling Space Odyssey's power-prog battlecruiser. Strong songwriting, a coat of glossy studio sheen, and vocals that won't pop your eardrums all combine to make Embrace The Galaxy a surprisingly engaging listen.
Everything old is new again, or so the saying goes. Space Odyssey is rooted heavily in Helloween-y powermetal, with a heady blend of Dream Theater-esque progressive keyboards provided by frontman Richard Andersson. I've not heard Andersson's previous work with Time Requiem and Majestic, so I can't say how it compares to Space Odyssey... but if you've heard symphonic neoclassical power-prog before, and I know you have, then you know the drill. There's nothing especially new or original in the way the genre conventions are deployed here, but the technical execution is far above average. Records like this often fall into the dreaded black hole of YAPMA (Yet Another Power Metal Album), but Andersson and guitarist Magnus Nilsson's efforts stave off the need to sound a red alert.
Nilsson's guitarwork is the focal point for much of the album. He effortlessly blasts up and down the scales, his hyperdrive firing at full throttle. Again and again, he proves that his fingers are made of some substance more resilient than human skin, more precise than a well-programmed robot. Really, though, despite his fantastic speed and dead-on accuracy, Nilsson is little more than a shredder at heart. I hate to belittle his skills, as they are impressive in their own regard... it would just be nice to hear something a bit more artistic than the very standard (but expertly played) jaunts up and down the fretboard that he provides on Embrace The Galaxy. His sheer speed is imposing, but he is as artless as Malmsteen, lagging behind the giants of the electric guitar world (whom many of you may never even have heard of. Lane. Bumblefoot. Schuldiner.) I will concede that this is among the most enjoyable shredding I have encountered, though. I will be interested to see how Mr. Nilsson develops from here.
Combining Andersson's keyboards, Nilsson's guitarwork, and Patrik Johansson's midrange vocals (sounding like a gravel throated Michael Kiske) has yielded a superior example of a well worn genre. Just so he doesn't feel left out, I'll also mention that Zoltan Csörsz is quite a capable drummer. He also has a really cool name, appropriate for a space-themed band, since it sounds like it should belong to the villain in a Flash Gordon movie. All jests aside, Embrace The Galaxy will likely please fans of neoclassical powermetal unless they are so burnt out on an admittedly oversaturated genre that nothing is enjoyable anymore. This Space Odyssey is a good trip for anyone who wants to tour the finer side of retro-modern power-prog.
Track List:
01.) Despair and Pain
02.) Embrace the Galaxy
03.) Emposium
04.) Entering the Dome
05.) The House with a Hundred
Windows
06.) Grand Opening
07.) Requiem for a Dream
08.) Seduction of Life
09.) A Perfect Day
Space Odyssey is:
Richard Andersson - Keyboard
Magnus Nilsson - Guitars
Zoltan Csörsz - Drums
Patrik Johansson - Vocals
Marcel Jacob - Bass
Space Odyssey Official Site:
http://www.anderssonmusic.com/
Regain Records:
http://www.regainrecords.com/
The End Records (US Distribution):
http://www.theendrecords.com/
Stark
Wield (EP)
~reviewed by chris
parasyte
What is it about the Australian landscape that makes the young men there so damn angry? Henry Rollins once speculated it was the school uniforms they wear growing up that does it, but no one really knows. Regardless, from down under comes Stark, the musical project of Ben Lee Bulig. His debut EP, Wield, seems a challenge to the reigning lords of aggro-industrial such as :wumpscut:, Frontline Assembly and Hocico. Stark promises to usher in a new breed of aggressive electronic music and give the industrial music scene a much-needed shot in the ass.
Taking influences from industrial, noi5e, and EBM, Stark constructs a punishing aural landscape which is both bleak and, at the same time, complex. There is a lot going on in the music, and it’s all put together in a way that makes this audio chaos work seamlessly. Bets heard on a stereo with lots of big, loud speakers pumping out at maximum volume, Wield will piss off your family and neighbors.
The title track “Wield,” taken from the following full-length album The Surgical Suite, appears on this EP in three different forms. In addition to the album version of the song, we are also treated to the “Degradation” and “Kinetic” remixes, presumably remixed by Bulig himself as no other credit is listed. I enjoyed the “Kinetic” version above the other two versions of the song, it being a bit more streamlined and tailored for the dancefloor than its brothers.
Apart from only one other track, “Exquisite Pain (Chance),” the rest of the songs on the EP are non-album tracks, and the version of “Exquisite Pain” presented here is also a non-album remix. “Lifestyle” is the best of the bunch, opening with a sampled harpsichord line which gives way to a rather Snog-esque instrumental piece.
Track List:
1. Wield (Album)
2. Wield (Degradation)
3. Wield (Kinetic)
4. Pattaya
5. On Your Skin
6. Lifestyle
7. Exquisite Pain (Chance)
8. Venus
Stark is:
Ben Lee Bulig
Official Website: www.thesurgicalsuite.com
Ground Under Productions
www.gup.net.au
info@gup.net.au
Ground Under Productions
PO Box 246
Northcote VIC 3070
Australia
Thunderbirds Are Now!
Doctor, Lawyer, Indian
Chief
~reviewed by Matthew
Heilman
When asked about this disc by a DJ colleague who was rummaging through my CDs one evening, I remarked rather off the cuff “Oh, Thunderbirds Are Now. They sound like the White Stripes on crack.” I have yet to find any simpler or more direct way of describing this band, so there you go. Such a description, in my world, is a compliment however shallow it may seem. Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief is a blistering set of dance-punk freakouts, spastic rhythm structures, geeky synths, shrill guitars, and frantic vocal shouts. The album clocks in at barely half an hour, with the tracks blurring together for one coherent blast of supercharged eccentricity and entertaining restlessness.
Though the Thunderbirds are merciful to those of us with fragmented attention spans, the band’s brisk compositions will undoubtedly wear thin on lesser-minded folk that expect the same boring predictable musical formulas. They are far from easy listening, but goddamn are they chaotic fun! And that is something I think a lot of music critics and fan lose site of in their search for the profound. Not everything can be the next great epic that requires sharp analysis or emotional immersion. This is refreshing and wonderfully uninhibited, menacing enough to appeal to my darker dispositions but too mischievous to take close to heart. There are some great hooks, mostly appearing in some of the chanted vocal parts and the bouncing angular guitars. All in all, this is crazy summertime music to thrash around to, anchored with enough punch and groove to make it count. A glance at the song titles will certainly inspire a perplexed chuckle. Somewhere, I am sure there’s a message. But you won’t be scratching your head too long before you’re caught up in the whirling vortex of sound and rhythm, and you just go with it and pinwheel along to the edge of maniacal oblivion.
All the labeling and categorization is irrelevant, but I doubt it would be that limiting on my part to suggest that fans of the Rapture or the Liars would dig this quite a bit. The band admittedly confesses that they could be in league with other ‘post punk revivalists’ in their press sheet, but their concern is less about posturing and coolness and more for “bashing out…songs that are perfect for your next amphetamine dance party.” Hold the amphetamines though – the music is commanding and effective enough to succeed without ‘em. Recommended for the adventurous and those who missed out on anxious confrontational new wave bands.
1.) KGB Phone Sex
2.) Not Witherspoon But
Silverstone
3.) Pink Motorcycle Helmet
4.) Keep It On The LO-LO
5.) Kitchen Orgy
6.) TurboRattt
7.) Your Mission Is An Intermission
8.) Party A.R.M.
9.) Who Wants To Fight?
10.) When It Comes To Elements,
Hydrogen Is Titz
11.) Top Secret Upskirt
Camera
12.) Babygirl, I Got Ten
Kids (Let’s Not Make It Eleven)
Thunderbirds Are Now:
Ryan Allen (vocals, guitar,
percussion)
Scott Allen (keyboards,
drum machine, vocals, percussion)
Mike Dugan (drums, cymbals,
percussion)
Martin Smith (bass, percussion)
Thunderbirds Are Now – Official
Site:
http://www.skylinememoirs.com/tan
Action Driver Records:
http://www.actiondriver.com
Tiamat
Prey
~reviewed by Matthew
Heilman
It’s hard to believe, but Prey will mark the eighth release from Sweden’s Tiamat. They are a band I have been comfortable with and following for many years now, and even as my musical interests continually change and branch out even further from the dark metal that once held me so spellbound, Tiamat’s releases never fail to be an intriguing listening experience. The press release points out that 2004 marks ten years since the band’s breakthrough release “Wildhoney” took the metal world by storm, and fans will be happy to know that this disc starts out with a cut that recalls that particular era of the band.
“Cain” kicks the CD off on an incredibly high and arresting note, ranking as one of the darkest and heaviest tracks Tiamat has released in a number of years. The soft watery guitar introduction and the distant samples of chirping bird’s pays homage to the pastoral into to “Whatever That Hurts” from the aforementioned album. But Tiamat is far beyond attempting to simply relive formal glories alone, for the new material is fresh and forward thinking but does seem to have revitalized several elements that put them on the map years ago, that weren’t quite as prevalent on recent releases. “Prey” puts the band’s previous release, “Judas Christ” into a new and slightly less impressive position in the band’s discography. Light years ahead of that release in terms of sincerity, this new disc seems to be far less mired in sardonic lyrical irony or mischievous “Vision Thing” inspired hard rock numbers.
“Cain” is a dense, heaving track with sharp crunchy guitars, and foreboding spirals of ominous chord changes and firmly anchored drums. Though definitely refined with a sense of Gothic Rock ornamentation (distinctive bass lines, wistful guitar effects, and tolling bells) the overall result is a mammoth and unforgettable dark metal track.
I am slightly disappointed to say that the entire disc doesn’t possess the same straightforward intensity, but then again, it would be far too single-dimensioned of a band that has come as far as Tiamat to go that route. There are a number of different moods and styles throughout this album; some are exceptional while others aren’t quite as monumental. As a whole, the album finds the band at their most confident. Johan’s voice sounds better than it ever has, more fluid and less constrained. He varies from his usual commanding monotone to inject more feeling and he seems to have acquired a more natural pacing with his enunciation and the like. Overall, there is a colourful palette of coherent material to digest that will appeal to each listener’s unique tastes and background. Tracks that I found weak, I can see others rejoicing over, and vice versa.
“Ten Thousand Tentacles” is a brief atmospheric epilogue to the opening cut, making way for “Wings Of Heaven” and “Love In Chains,” both very accessible sounding pieces, with soothing verse passages and immense anthem worthy choruses. These are as close as Tiamat will ever come to hard rock or pop hopefully. They really needn’t go any further, for as it is, the songs’ guitar leads and melodic choruses tread dangerously along the edge of say, Cinderella or LA Guns gone Goth. But that is not to say that at this point, Tiamat’s pop flirtations do not have a firm foothold in the underground. I just hope they pull this tendency back a degree or two. I am sure that others might disagree, and then still others thought this band sold out after “Clouds” was released.
Whatever the case, a different manner of accessibility appears with “Divided,” the second big highlight on the disc for me. This track is heavily characterized by solemn piano passages that first appear in isolation and then are soon joined by resonant drums and Johan’s vocals. The lyrics appear to be lamenting a failed relationship or marriage and are especially poignant. “The marriage has gone to my head/ the wedding trumpets are dead / replaced by static noise / so loud I can’t hear my own voice / Will those signs lead me out of here / well, just take me somewhere / to the planes where angels sing through the chimes and clattering.” Female vocals join with Johan (not particularly stellar technically speaking but conceptually, they work wonderfully), cautioning, “For what it’s worth, the truth might hurt you / (there is little that you can do) / When shadows fall, I will desert you / (then that’s what you will do).” The song’s chorus appears forlorn and drenched in bittersweet regret “Lead me inside, lead me inside of the cold / let me inside, feel me inside / When the seed is sown our love’s dead by dawn.” Very nice choirs flesh things out, and a beautiful guitar lead appears as the song twists and turns through more provocative changes. “Divided” is one of Tiamat’s most triumphant moments, both in terms of songwriting and musical arrangement.
“You Carry Your Cross And I’ll Carry Mine” is memorable more than for it’s unique title, as the song is a lumbering moody affair with nice pianos and walls of dreary guitars. With the duet between Johan and the female vocalist in the spotlight, the song sounds a lot like an extension of ideas neglected to be embellished by Paradise Lost on their “Icon” CD. “Triple Cross” serves as another brief epilogue before a return to a Sisters Of Mercy inspired drive on “Light In Extension.” This song offers a glimpse into Tiamat’s playful side (as earlier mentioned regarding “Judas Christ”), fast paced, momentous and well structured. It is deeper in its dynamics than other similar tracks from their past (“Brighter Than The Sun” or “Vote For Love” for example) and works quite well.
The title track is a reflective and sobering ballad, opening with the eerie chiming of cuckoo clocks (undoubtedly in tribute to Pink Floyd’s classic ode to mutability) before a shadowy, and heavily chorused guitar passage appears, echoing with fragile beauty much to the same tune as my all time favourite Tiamat song “A Deeper Kind Of Slumber.” Johan’s voice is especially vulnerable, and the murky guitar remains unaccompanied save for soft low synth drones. Despite the lack of drums, it packs one of the most emotive punches on the whole album and is a worthy namesake. The dreamy “Garden of Heathen” is the album’s third interlude, prefacing the final chapter of the album. “Clovenhoof” is a pleasant driving track, with a fair balance between melodic atmosphere and steady-paced groove, with the guitars ringing out brilliantly between frames of hushed power chords and swirling synths. Pianos return to the forefront at the beginning of “Nihil,” as do some dramatic chord progressions. The song flirts between major and minor keys, plodding along much in the same manner as a track like “Haunted” by Type O Negative. But despite the similarity, Tiamat stamps the song through and through with their own distinctive style and is one of the more engrossing tracks presented on this new disc. We get to hear an unexpected verse showcasing Johan’s higher vocal registers toward the end of the track, which breaks down with a bluesy guitar lead before a reverberated piano outro brings it all home.
The final track, “The Pentagram” is a musical interpretation of a poem by Aleister Crowley (approved by the OTO nonetheless, as the press sheet boasts). The song opens with an unorthodox pairing of bluesy guitar and secular church organ swells. Overall it’s a slightly tripped out track, with acoustic strumming layered atop a plodding almost Zeppelin-esque backdrop. Samples and quips of Crowley and other prophetic socially conscious warnings are seasoned throughout, and though a nice montage of sounds, it kind brings the album to a close on a rather anti-climactic but pleasing note.
Overall, Prey is a solid and more than worthwhile release, with several surprises and high points for longtime Tiamat devotees and fans of Goth Metal to cherish. I suppose perhaps I would ideally like to hear an entire album with the same stark intensity as “Cain,” but I can see how limiting it might be to Johan Edlund’s multi-faceted vision for this project. Whatever the case, the album validates my long-time interest in Tiamat and I foresee many repeated listens on my part. I imagine others will be as equally satisfied and impressed with this new release as I was, and will continue to be as I continue to absorb it.
Tracks:
1.) Cain
2.) Ten Thousand Tentacles
3.) Wings Of Heaven
4.) Love In Chains
5.) Divided
6.) Carry Your Cross And
I’ll Carry Mine
7.) Triple Cross
8.) Light In Extension
9.) Prey
10.) The Garden Of Heathen
11.) Clovenhoof
12.) Nihil
13.) The Pentagram
Tiamat is:
Johan Edlund – vocals, guitars,
keyboards
Anders Iwers – bass
Lars Skold – drums
Tiamat – Official Site:
http://www.churchoftiamat.com
Century Media Records:
http://www.centurymedia.com
THE UNHOLY GUESTS
BLACK CLOUDS, RED
SKIES
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
So how do you react when you think of Russian Goth? You expect sombre sounds, if not actual bleakness? Wrong, you have here a band who sound remarkably vibrant, taking you aback from the word go with buoyant style, and a singer on about, “your skin smells like Spring.” The title song of this EP positively bounces along. There are good, confident English vocals, sweeping happily into the mixture, with keyboards sparkling and the guitar picked at watchfully. It becomes compelling through its very warmth, and even fades out in a masterful fashion.
‘Helga’ sees a deeper, more conventional voice (I’d have liked to have heard at least one song in Russian myself), and here the guitar gets willowy with serious panache and you can see they understand Goth curvature as we get to explore silken troughs of sound.
The guitar remains steady and fairly fast throughout ‘Dark Dancefloor’, ever-constant, with some light keyboards again. It’s just so bubbly and charming, very catchy with a sudden, superb ending, and maybe ‘Synapses Cry’ seems more ordinary. The vocals rise and fall as the guitar has a more conservative pace, but greater impact. A weird musical interlude with fabulous keyboards will make you smile, and as the guitar gets moody so the vocals froth, but settle gently into the chorus and it ends all too soon, but if you wait long enough the secret live track appears and this suggests they can go really mental too.
Exciting, either in that rawer form, or the gentler strains of the poppier studio work, with interesting lyrics, this is a great new band. Try and get yourself a copy, because you’ll love it. They’re doing it their own way, and they’re doing it beautifully.
BLACK CLOUDS, RED SKIES
HELGA
DARK DANCEFLOOR
SYNAPSES CRY
http://the-unholy-guests.nm.ru
While Heaven Wept
Of Empires Forlorn
~reviewed by Eric
Rasmussen
Imagine, if you will, a power metal band. One that was as happy and bubbly as any other power metal band, and perfectly content to sing of far-off battles and great deeds and soaring eagles. Yet one day tragedy befell this unlucky group, and they were cast out of happy land (which is where all of the power metallers live, of course). Seriously distressed and unable to cope with their sadness, they decided to become a doom metal band. At least, that's my fanciful version of how While Heaven Wept came to be. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it.
Of Empires Forlorn is doom metal in the older sense of the word, when heavy metal could be doom, and before absurdly long and repetitive tracks of low moaning became the order of the day. While Jason Gray (drums) and Jim Hunter (bass) fill out the rhythm section nicely, the real beauty of the music comes from Scott Loose (guitars) and Tom Phillips (everything else). The songs create atmospheres bereft of the glee one would generally associate with the heavy metal style of instrumentation; however, Of Empires Forlorn is not without hope. Tom Phillips's vocals span a suitably lengthy range of pitches, and he can just as easily provide lilting, upper-register melodies as he can downcast lamentations or caustic rasping.
The guitars span an even greater range, at least stylistically. Chugging mid-tempo riffs drive the music along at a calm but steady pace, beautifully phrased melodies weave their way into the soundscape, and the occasional tasteful solo drops in just long enough to give the songs extra emotion. Unfortunately, the guitars and vocals, while each spectacular on their own, do not always work together. Phillips is a fine heavy/power metal singer, but the awkwardly bombastic phrasing from those genres often rings out annoyingly against the doom metal instrumentation. One has to wonder if he chooses his phrasings based not on musical intent, but rather to fit a quota for technically impressive but musically irritating metal standards.
Fans of older metal styles looking for a relatively depressing 43 minutes of music will find no better band than While Heaven Wept. Yet even if you have a few issues with said stylistic conventions (as I do, admittedly), you'll still enjoy the wonderfully crafted songs on Of Empires Forlorn, although you might find the CD falling just short of "mandatory". All in all, a deep and engrossing listen, open only to the kind of criticisms that spring from personal taste. Definitely check it out.
Track List:
1. The Drowning Years
2. Of Empires Forlorn
3. Voice in the Wind
4. In Aeturnum
5. Soulsadness
6. Epistle No. 81
7. Sorrow of the Angels
While Heaven Wept is:
Tom Phillips - Guitars,
Vocals and Keyboards
Scott Loose - Guitars
Jason Gray - Drums
Jim Hunter - Bass
While Heaven Wept - Official
Site:
http://www.whileheavenwept.net/
Rage of Achilles:
http://www.rageofachilles.com/
The End Records (US):
http://www.theendrecords.com/
WORM
INTEGRAL VIRUS (Voltage)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
We get Industrial sludge by the avalanche-load, to the point where it gets immensely boring, so a Rock variant makes for a more than diverting change, and that is essentially what Worm provide. So if you want things simpler, but fuller, eyes down…
You get plaintive backing, where the electronic mist is succulent, but the counter-rhythm signals an attacking spirit, and you know the noise is coming, which comes with a guitar which explores and exploits the instrument’s melodic potency not merely its power. And that’s another essential difference here. In Industrial variants it’s the synth which hold 50% of the power and direction. Here the synth are the petrol, the guitar the steering, the guide. It makes for an attractively modern sound. Think ‘Spacer’ By Sheila B Devotion (a classic track) but laced with fury.
With ‘Cybersex’ it’s guitars from the outset, and the fluidity is not interrupted. The guitar lines seem very 80’s, so that it becomes filmic not merely atmospheric like so many studio-based projects reek of. They needed to double the intensity of the guitar towards the end if they wanted to seem like a band, because they could have achieved lift off, but this is still club music.
‘Ends Of The Earth’ is a lusher sprawl, with an already familiar rhythm for you to feed off, and the guitar strokes as it stokes. In ‘Oxygen Free’ there’s a few keyboard frills which seem mushy but it has a pleasant edge, and the undulating background sparkles, probably because they don’t try and fill the songs with too many layers. ‘Sanitized’ brings the guitar back to the for with a lurching riff and using a slow power chord for punctuation. And then they revert to their most polished and poppy for ‘Life Part 2’.
The remix of ‘Cybersex’ is squishier, and then it ends (not a long album, which makes for more impact) with someone called Sacha adding the first real human presence, and create neon-lit rock. So it’s an interesting entity and has potential as band, if they bring in a permanent singer. Otherwise they are creating a hybrid for the electronic and industrial fans which keeps things simple, has all the melodic skills and makes for arresting compositions,. I was impressed.
VIRUS
CYBERSEX
ENDS OF THE EARTH
OXYGEN FREE
SANITIZED
LIFE PART 2
CYBERSEX (ORGASMATRON MIX)
BOREDOMKILLS (feat. Sacha)
ZOMBINA AND THE SKELETONES
TASTE THE BLOOD OF…
(Lowsley Sound Recordings)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
One thing is abundantly clear as soon as you hear this, or see the website, and that’s that they’re an experience live. There are bands, and there are artists, and somewhere inbetween lurk characters who don’t mind splashing knee deep through treacherous comedic waters. The bands invariable have fake personalities, and make each night a dramatic collision, where you must embrace it all to get the most out of it.
Because of the imagery involved and some of the titles you might be expecting me to throw The Cramps at you, but you’d be wrong because this is like Psychobilly meets The Rezillos. It’s modern but has some prehistoric overtures, and it works, most of the time.
The most immediate thing bands like this need is a steady beat to give clear, concise power, and they have that. It helps if you have cunning, gunning guitars, which they can’t lay any great claims to, and the singing must be invested with character, which they manage to nail a good 75% of the time. What they lack in consistency of guitar clout, or true vocal dominance they make up, somewhat strangely, by some hideously distinctive lyrics which are also very clever indeed.
Okay, ‘The Grave And Beyond’ is burly pop-punk that will grab your interest and then ‘Nobody Likes You’ gives a terrific example of how great these vocals can be. It seems badly produced but such a voluptuous tune just spills over as the guitar and dodgy organ scrap, as the whole tune pounds away. (Oddly, the pop goo that helps douse the punky guitar inclinations of ‘Braindead’ did remind me of those great lost Punk-pop wonders, The Photos.)
They’ve also got some deeper moments of peculiarity, to make you pause a while, even though the idea itself fits the overall theme, and hearing the male vocals in ‘Leave My Brain Alone’ complaining, ‘I can’t strand to see another anal probe’ gives their abduction tribute a bit of thought, as they glide rather than relying on frenzy, but after that they hit some mini-doldrums. Following some Ants-like yelping, ‘Ape Man’ doesn’t amount to much, ‘Can’t Break A Dead Girl’s Heart’ is a striking song, which needed more lift and separation, and ‘Meteorite’ cries out for craziness but really just faffs about.
‘The Egyptian’s Song’ is wonderfully crafty and opts for an intentionally deeper build-up but throws it away on the fast ending, ‘Christina’ has some nice choppy elements, but it’s ‘The First Kiss’ which annoys me most because the lyrics here are utterly brilliant, and the song does them no justice whatsoever, and despite going out in a cacophony of punk blare, ‘Horror Highshchool’ isn’t anywhere near as emphatic and clompy as you’d expect.
Stick with the final track and there’s some demonic roaring to finally see the record off, but I was frowning, I must admit. For a debut it’s fine, with some great moments, but I’d hate to think that in the pursuit of fun and frolics the signs of some really superb quality isn’t going to be left untended. That’s the problem with bands who have a humour tag so heftily tied round their throat. It makes it hard for anything else to come through.
THE GRAVE AND BEYOND + NOBODY
LIKES YOU (WHEN YOU’RE DEAD) + BRAINDEAD + LEAVE MY BRAIN ALONE + APE MAN
+ CAN’T BREAK A DEAD GIRL’S HEART + METEORIC + THE EGYPTIAN’S SONG + CHRISTINA
+ THE FIRST KISS (CUTS DEEPEST) + HORROR HIGHSCHOOL
This CD, currently a CD-R initially went out at a gig, and I’m sure diehards will die hard for it. It’s it more Scooby Doo meets The Monster Mash in tone overall, with cocky offhand punky cool (and yes, almost as good as early Blondie) and highlights where the r ‘n’ r flourishes and rockabilly cadence can be accommodated. There’s some slack wobbling lips of a perverted Elvis tribute, and plenty of frisky guitar to keep things moving, and the whole thing has a jaunty air about it.
You really can’t go wrong. Unless you’re a po-faced twat.
HEY, WEIRDOS! + ISLAND OF
ZOMBINA! + COME ON! + FRANKENLADY! + THE COUNT OF FIVE! + YOU’D SCREAM
IF YOU KNEW WHAT I DID LAST HALLOWEEN! + NIGHT OF THE LIVING SKULL (NO
EXCLAMATION MARK!)
http://www.blindwolfstudios.com
– cartoon artwork
http://www.zombina.com/
VARIOUS ARTISTS
AURAL QUAGMIRE (Voltage
Records)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
I’ve always assumed that doing compilations amounts to a long-winded way of throwing money down the drain, unless you have a specific genre in mind so it’s a brave step Voltage have taken with this album, pulling together left-field rock and indie and jumbling them together, achieving a supremely satisfying result.
I don’t listen to much indie anymore these days as two decades of soppy boys attempting to be heroic did my head in, and yet the bands here remind me why it can be so good. Caine do it with a grumpy onslaught and shrivelled 60’s vocal loveliness, mixed with acoustic warmth. Idiot Box have absurdly clever lyrics, and just when you’re thinking of a Lighting Seeds upgrade they throw in some monstrous surges making them unpredictable beasts, with ‘No Disco’ being a Smash Mouth UK, and that’s no disgrace either (think ‘All Star’, which is brilliant). Darwin are like the big polished indie variant, but with weirdly brilliant guitar and some genuinely slippery music.
Worm crop up with two songs, one being the quite murderous ‘Hate’, letting the rock veins burst and then it’s entrancing ambient dance for ‘The 18th’. When you get Rock coming at you it’s nice if it’s worm-turning Faith No More era, which is something Burn Horizon understand. They have meticulous guitar and spry vocals, until exploding in spasms, with a strangely polite turn of phrase in ‘Horizon’, then the full-on butting, riff-rutting antagonisms of ‘Burn For You’ with speed metal flecks.
10,000 Things have soul, which is undeniable, but they also do funny indie with an uplifting manic quality about them. Think Jim Jiminee, if you can remember back that far. Purity Cries have crunching, rasping metal, but also the more explorative side, which reminded me of UK Decay - not the sound, because there’s no similarity there, but the way they have ambition and integrity in the music which emerges. There are traces of Black Metal today which have more in common with early Post-Punk than anything in conventional, or unconventional, Rock and here’s a band to consider and savour as saviours if you like some viscous noise made my artistic people.
So a weird comp, but a great comp. Not one duff track!
CAINE - TEA & SYMPATHY
BURN HORIZON - HORIZON
IDIOT BOX - SPEEDOPHILE
PURITY CRIES - CALIBRE
DARWIN - MORE THAN YOU WILL
EVER KNOW
WORM - HATE
10,000 THINGS - RELAX &
PLAY
CAINE - DRAWING STRAWS
BURN HORIZON - BURN FOR
YOU
IDIOT BOX - NO DISCO
PURITY CRIES - RARE BLUE
SKY
DARWIN - ON AIR
WORM - THE 18TH
10,000 THINGS - LA LA LA
VARIOUS CATLOVERS
A CAT-SHAPED HOLE
IN MY HEART
(Projekt)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
Cats are better than people, obviously, not that I’d say anyone has ever written a great song about cats, or if they have I’ve yet to hear one, which is surely testament to their enigmatic qualities. You never know what they’re thinking, unless they’re especially dim in which case they’re probably not thinking anything at all. I once had a cat called Fred Bloggs who was the dumbest individual I think I have ever encountered, and all the more loveable for it. He’d wait at the very back of the garden, under his favourite tree, clearly pleased to see me but no matter how much I called, or gestured, he wouldn’t react; gradually requiring me to walk further towards him and go through my daily routine, until I was within about one foot of him and then he would leap and grin and chase around my feet, all the way back to the house. By the time I’d got his food ready he’d be fast asleep on the floor. And so we would begin again.
Lynda has four cats. Many are the nights she has set out at three in the morning in her dressing gown, calling ‘Toffee?’ like the world’s most desperate sweetaholic. One of her cats, house leader Sammy, treats me as his personal serf. “Ah, the butler! This way….” Off he goes, leading me to the kitchen. And that’s the thing about cats compared to other animals: they go their own way. They have their own interests, and if they come to you it’s because they want to and, quite often, they do by simply wandering about all over you.
This delightful benefit album for a No Kill cat shelter, Tree House in Chicago, was inspired initially by Sam Rosenthal’s cat Vidna succumbing to something called Feline Leukemia (FeLV). All artists here submit songs about cats, as well as photographs of their cats, making it a clear bout of easy listening with an attractive layout.
The music? Well, it still fits within the traditional tremulous artistic quandaries of the Projekt name, but there’s a few thorny offshoots to the normal bespectacled orchid. Collide veer between nightmare and stillness, Regenerator are the moodiest with some very weird, glowering vocal dramatics in sepulchral surrounds, and Thomas Thorn could well be mental. You’ll find plain vibrato from Stone 588 thrown into their creamy, sweeping Goth and I also thought The Read Letter had interesting Goffy swirls.
Tara Vanflower’s floating
acoustics are a charming opener, and Faith & The Muse have the most
beautiful vocals, although Shotgun Wedding have The Moon Seven Times along
for the exquisitely spruce ride. Mira remain pretty and light for all the
guitar fuzz. Otherwise it’s all open windows on a summery eve, vocals drifting
on the breeze. Area’s vocals spread like warm oil on wood as teasing percussion
fails to go anywhere at all. Black Tape For A Blue Girl come over as pleasantly
emotional, Dead Leaves Rising are mainly musing, and we kneel arthritically
at The High Church Of Warbling as The Changelings shift power nimbly and
caper like only demented museum curators could rival.
Anyone with a cat who doesn’t get this must be off their head.
TARA VANFLOWER – Galactipus + FAITH & THE MUSE - In Dreams Of Mine + SHOTGUN WEDDING – Inside Only Cat + MIRA – Cayman + THE READ LETTER – Clawing Curtains + REGENERATOR – Night And Mourning + COLLIDE – Felix The Cat + THOMAS THORN – Mad Max + STONE 588 – Eye Of The Moon + NUMERALIA – Espirito Gato + AREA – Too Far Away + THE CHANGELINGS – Caterwaul + DEAD LEAVES RISING – In The Snow + BLACK TAPE FOR A BLUE GIRL – Majestic As A King
http://www.projekt.com
http://www.projekt.com/cat
- more FeLV info
VARIOUS ARTISTS
A DARK NOEL The Very
Best Of Excelsis (Projekt)
~review by Mick
Mercer
I have always loved Xmas and it’s the one time of year when I feel charitable even to bad bands and gross songs, not that I expect to find any here. The boxed set of the previous trio of Excelsis releases is probably a better bet for anyone who loves the Projekt way, but this single album offers a bit of light exhumation of the three releases
Love Spirals Downwards set the tone and the warmly coddled style, slightly incomprehensible vocally, as if happily smothered by a lush arrangement. Rhea’s Obsession than move away from the indie-Goth haze and give us the first of many ‘traditional’ tracks, but the Middle East Meets West arrangement this could be straight off some Xmas show aimed at the Yoof market, and manages to be lightly abrasive with the vocals. Unto Ashes give us simplicity, beauty and also something creepy which is bounds to conjure up ‘Wicker Man’ memories.
Black Tape are a bit naughty as from out of their breezy clanking come traces of the Velvets (I’m thinking ‘Venus In Furs’!), Cruxshadows give a suitably dour, off kilter rendition of a bearable Beatles ditty, and Audra go for the cheery yet sad view of a modern Xmas.
It’s mainly a loving mixture, and the silky nuzzling of Faith & Disease fits into the slipstream, where Lynn canfield turns into Julie Andrews. Love Spirals offer a breathtakingly delicate concoction of perky musical bubbles, E Duende is moody, creating a dusty void that’s a damn site better than the shite that was Steeleye Span, before Lycia do something odd. They opt for sounding mystical and come over as faintly ludicrous, as the music remains quite displaced, but it ‘s too late to effectively damage what is a heart-warming album of ghostly sounds from Christmases Past.
The only thing which bugged me was the title, a Dark Noel. There must be plenty of room to go for quite a disturbing Christmas concept, of charity usurped, of ghosts and Christmas demons. This clearly isn’t it. It’s almost the very spirit of pressing your nose against cold glass to spy even the teensiest snowflake falling.
Happy Xmas, in case I don’t remember to say it later on.
LOVE SPIRALS DOWNWARDS –
WELCOME CHRISTMAS
RHEA’S OBSESSION WITH ATHAN
MAROULIS – WE THREE KINGS
UNTO ASHES – LORD OF THE
DANCE
BLACK TAPE FOR A BLUE GIRL
– CHANNUKAH, OH CHANNUKAH
THE CRUXSHADOWS – HAPPY
XMAS (WAR IS OVER)
AUDRA - LET THE REINDEER
LIE ON MY ROOF
FAITH & DISEASE – SILVER
AND GOLD
LYNN CANFIELD – EDELWEISS
LOVESPIRALS – ASPEN GLOW
EL DUENDE - GAUDETE, GAUDETE
LYCIA/THE UNQUIET VOID -
WE THREE KINGS
Various Artists
Phases: The Dark Side
of Music
~reviewed by Joel
Steudler
What can you get these days for two dollars? Maybe a hamburger, if you have a coupon. Five or six postage stamps. A gallon of gasoline. Or you could get a compilation CD that assembles te work of fifteen high quality artists to yield over an hour of music. 'What', you say, 'are you smoking, brother?' I am smoke free, but The End Records' new compilation Phases: The Dark Side of Music is red hot and could combust at any moment, so watch out. In the 'bang for your buck' category, you can not go wrong with this unless you already own all of the albums that this material is drawn from.
Phases is divided into three sections, loosely grouping bands by how hard or soft their music is. The album covers miles of the musical landscape, with triprock, black metal, experimental ambient weirdness, artful extreme metal, and more. The lineup they have assembled really is stellar, and shows how committed The End is to signing quality acts. There are no clones here, none of the cookie cutter bands that pad out the rosters of many other labels. All it takes is one listen to this compilation and that much will be clear to just about anyone. It is a great move by the End to showcase just how diverse yet consistently high quality their roster is by releasing a compilation like this.
The one thing I must point out (at the risk of being remiss if I did not) is that about half of the tracks on Phases are available as free mp3 downloads on The End's website. If you have a broadband connection and can download the material quickly, that may play a role in your purchasing decision, but it can be a convenient timesaver otherwise. The tracks by Agalloch, Sculptured, Madder Mortem, Enslaved, Darkthrone, Epoch of Unlight, and Scholomance are all unique to this collection (and their respective artists' albums) and not presented elsewhere for free download. Seven good songs for two dollars (with free shipping in the US, no less!) is more than you get on your standard album these days. You're lucky to get two or three good songs for ten dollars or more on a lot of releases.
My point, then, is that you should buy Phases from The End's web store, particularly if you have yet to experience some of the bands on the compilation. There is something here to please fans of all walks of metal, and all of the acts represented are top notch artists. I would not recommend this to people who hate good music. If you are a hater of good music, or only like to spend your money on worthless items that show dubious artistic taste, this is not the release for you. Everyone else should give it a good hard look, and some good hard cash.
Track List:
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON
1 : The Gathering - Broken
Glass
2 : Antimatter - The Art
Of A Soft Landing
3 : Ulver - Vowels
4 : Agalloch - A Fragment
5 : Star Of Ash - Death
Salutes Atropos
THE DARK SIDE OF THE EARTH
6 : Sculptured - Suspiria
7 : Virgin Black - And The
Kiss Of God's Mouth
8 : Nightingale - Shadowman
9 : Madder Mortem - Jigsaw
(The Pattern and the Puzzle)
10 : In The Woods - Heart
Of The Ages (Live) (in association with Karmakosmetix)
THE DARK SIDE OF THE UNDERWORLD
11 : Enslaved - Queen Of
Night
12 : Frantic Bleep - Fluctuadmission
13 : Darkthrone - Divided
We Stand (in association with Moonfog)
14 : Epoch Of Unlight -
Caught In The Unlight
15 : Scholomance - Goodbye
Song
The End Records:
http://www.theendrecords.com/
VARIOUS ARTISTS
SENSITIVE SAMPLER
(Sensitive)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
It’s a sampler then, on which the main artist the majority of people reading this will be interested in is Nick Grey himself with his atmospheric orchestra of international playmates/cohorts, but the sampler covers the other artists on the label, two of which include Nick. Confused? Well, you won’t be.
We also have what I assume is label boss Nicolai’s Dad, Vasile Moldoveanu, an experienced tenor who gives us Bizet’s ‘Agnus Dei’ and a rousing bit of Tosca which had Lynda gushing "fantastic voice!", so the label has more than just modern electronic melodic attractions, of which Pinkerton & Grey are a sweet, poppier form of what Nick generally does. On ‘Wheelchair Lovesong’ they remind me of the late, great Furniture (anyone remember, ‘Brilliant Mind’, ‘Robert Nightman’s Story’? minus the cynisism or stridency. Otherwise it’s sobering ethereal traces mixed with soft, genuine romanticism.
EMPI is Nick’s earlier creation and it is seriously interesting, where hushed dramatic French lyrics, and slow percussive tinges embellish a strained mood. Think Portishead, but with artistry stitched into the very ether. The vague musical whispers of trickling piano and weaving strings swill around these words, in what appear to be stories.
Nioclai describes Nick’s music with his orchestra as ‘Tindersticks on acid’, but it’s never harsh, yet makes quite an impact. As he warbles happily into ‘Thievesamongthorns’ with the orchestra warming up, a strange whispering undercurrent operates beneath the electronic classical world. The vocals aren’t always introduced particularly slicky, but the feeling involved pushes any minor problems aside, and the scratching in the intriguing sound turns ‘Intruders’ into a bizarre visitor, as brutal guitar grinds behind high vocals.
The old, weariness in the voice makes the griminess of ‘Parachute Drops’ quite affecting, and the beautiful arrangement of ‘Structure And Faith’ hangs in the air. The fact you’re never given something emotionally resolved but just flitting past your face makes it all the more delightful. These are teasing encounters, both stirring and testing. A shame the music papers are dead in this country, because they’d have been all over Nick.
http://thievesandthrills.free.fr/sensitive/index.htm
http://www.nick-grey.com/
(I’m assuming the sites
are new, as there’s no galleries or detailed biographies for what I’d assume
are very interesting individuals, but there’s good music to listen to.)
VARIOUS ARTISTS
VIER FACTOR #1 (Dancing
Ferret)
~reviewed by Mick
Mercer
This is a nice idea where four singles are roped together, with extra tracks, starring The Cruxshadows, The Dreamside, Thou Shalt Not and Paralysed Age and assuming it’s a mid-priced thing I can see it being attractive to many who want to try out some names that may be new to them, but it has to be said that it also works overall through having a fairly united feel to the bands involved.
Mainly it’s previous work remixed, or things which you might find hard to find, so we’ll concentrate on the new tracks. Each artist has one track unavailable elsewhere. The Pet Shop Cruxshadows mainly give you three version of ‘Return (Coming Home)’ which is pleasant enough but ‘Dream Yourself Awake’ is far less predictable vocally and a slinky, slow item, which is highly becoming. The Dreamside have two versions of two songs not on albums, ‘Somewhere Before’ which is beautifully still, unfolding like a ballet score, and the stark attack of ‘Spin Moon Magic’ which becomes a melodic maelstrom with wonderfully stark, severe vocals. Paralysed Age have ‘Raindance’ which is pretty but fairly bland, and Thou Shalt Not do themselves nothing but good by including ‘The Final Year’, blessed with aromatic acoustic and those bright clear vocals which dominate even the quiet passages cleverly, involving the listener without being bombastic, and the rest of their material is equally charismatic and inspiring.
THE CRUXSHADOWS - RETURN
(COMING HOME)
Return - Cruxshadows Synthetic
Victory Mix
Return - Neuroticfish Remix
Dream Yourself Awake
Return - Advent Sleep Remix
THE DREAMSIDE - SOMEWHERE
BEFORE
Somewhere Before
Spin Moon Magic
Somewhere Before - Angels
& Agony Remix
Spin Moon Magic - Dreamside
Remix
PARALYSED AGE - BERENICE
Berenice
Raindance
Berenice - Iris Remix
Bittersweet - Berenice part
2
THOUSSHALTNOT - CARDINAL
DIRECTIONS
Cardinal Directions
100 Generations - Second
Generation Mix (Hungry Lucy)
The Final Year
Cardinal Directions (Stromkern
Remix)