Posts Tagged ‘Metropolis Records’

Then Comes Silence – Boxed

Posted: 13 February 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 21st February 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

If one nation really loves its rock and it’s goth stuff, it’s Germany, and there are a fair few UK bands who, while they fair ok at home, are absolutely massive in Germany: the fact The Sisters of Mercy have continued to headline major festivals there well into the 00s, while at home, apart from Reading in ’91, they’ve never really featured in festival lineups gives a fair indication of the difference. So it should be of no surprise that it’s in Germany that Swedish post-punk/goth act Then Comes Silence grew their fanbase first in Germany, before expanding across mainland Europe after sharing stages with artists such as A Place To Bury Strangers, Chameleons and Fields Of The Nephilim.

Boxed should probably have been retitled Unboxed for this edition, being a digital reissue of tracks included in a limited and long-sold-out box set edition of their 2022 album Hunger, Consisting of two songs in Spanish, two instrumentals, two remixes and one outtake from that album, its reissue lands coincidental with the completion of a US tour in support of their seventh album, Trickery, released last year.

As one may expect from the summary, it’s more of a mixed bag of novel odds and ends than a serious or coherent EP release, and the presence of the songs sung in Spanish remind me of when The Wedding Present released ‘Pourquoi Es Tu Devenue Si Raisonnable?’, a French-language recording of ‘Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now?’ Sung in Gedge’s flat, Leeds accent, it sounds like… The Wedding Present, of course, and I’m sceptical about the translation given just how nearly the lyrics fit the melody.

Anyway. Boxed. The Spanish language versions of ‘Dias y Años’ and ‘Cebo’ are solid, but obviously don’t really bring much to the table, especially for the non-Spanish speakers – beyond a novel spin, that is. But make no mistake the ultra-percussive, stony goth groove of ‘Cebo’ (or ‘Worm’, as it is titled in English) is a killer cut in any language.

The first instrumental, ‘Spökenas Intåg (Walk-In)’, which in fact lifts the curtain on the release, is a somewhat spooky, atmospheric composition, imbued with filmic qualities, and it would sit comfortably on the soundtrack of a movie or maybe even a docudrama about a serial killer or something.

‘We Only Have So Long’ is a thrusting, energetic, guitar-driven song, packing groove and force into two and a half minutes, and while its offcut status is because of how it doesn’t really sit in the framework of the album, it might have made a standalone single, because, why not? It’s certainly not weak.

Although remixes rarely mark an improvement on the original – although there are notable exceptions – the H Zombie Remix of ‘Blood Runs Cold’ does at least bring something different.

The final track – amd second of the instrumentals – ‘Skuggornas Intåg’ bookends the EP and strives to give it some kind of cohesion, some kind of shape, being a clear counterpart to ‘Spökenas Intåg’. It’s atmospheric but inconsequential, and does feel rather like a space-filler or odd-end outro.

Ultimately, this release is simply what it is: a reissue of some bonus cuts for the benefit of the fans who missed out on the limited version of the album. It’ll no doubt make for a tidy addition for the new fans they accumulated on the tour, too, and it’s decent – but by no means their most essential offering.

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Watch: ‘Everything (2024 Remaster)’ by PIG

Posted: 30 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Industrial glam kingpin Raymond Watts aka PIG will reissue a remastered and expanded version of his 1996 album Wrecked via Metropolis Records on 7th March. His fifth full-length record, the remastering has been made by Tom Hall at Abbey Road, while its reappearance coincides with UK live dates to promote the 2024 studio album ‘Red Room’. The PIG live band currently includes En Esch (ex-KMFDM, Pigface) and Jim Davies, formerly of Pitchshifter but best known for his acidic and acerbic guitar lines on several chart hits by The Prodigy. Davies co-wrote many of the songs on ‘Red Room’.

Whereas the recently reissued Sinsation (1995) had originally been released on Nothing Records (the label established by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails), its follow-up saw a switch to Wax Trax!, the leading ‘90s exponents of industrial rock.

“Revisiting Wrecked for remastering was a sobering experience that left me shaken,” states Watts. “I recalled a period when I was stirred to a creative frenzy of crisis and desperation while searching for beauty. Although I can still hear glimpses of it, the bonfire of my hope was more an expression that was savage and twisted.”
Following the desperate burning that had resulted in Sinsation, Watts considers it more “a yearning, grinding plea for liberation that manifested in ‘Wrecked’, a tomb I had built for myself and my troubles that only the very bravest would dare enter.”

The original press release for Wrecked had described the album as “a nihilistic slash and burn, a scrapbook of manifestos and suicide notes written in dried blood.” In the cold light of day almost three decades later that description still holds true.

Wrecked features contributions from former KMFDM members Günter Schulz and Steve White, as well as Julian Beeston (ex-Nitzer Ebb, Cubanate).

Ahead of the expanded remastered reissue, they’ve released a video for ‘Everything’, which you can see here:

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Watch: ‘Blood Money’ by The Legendary Pink Dots

Posted: 11 January 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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“Way way back in the early days I used to say a lot about ‘The Terminal Kaleidoscope’, a concept comparing the fragile planet we live on to a drowning human being with life flashing before his or her eyes, the images constantly accelerating. It’s 2024, a little over two decades since the turn of this unbearably turbulent century and the concept appears to have become an unlikely soap opera where we are the cast. Let’s hang in there….”
Edward Ka-Spel – The Legendary Pink Dots

SO LONELY IN HEAVEN – THE CREATION

So Lonely in Heaven is the new album by the Anglo-Dutch experimental rock band The Legendary Pink Dots, who formed in London in 1980 and are still helmed by co-founder and frontman Edward Ka-Spel. Their second full-length effort since the World stopped for a Global Pandemic, group members were still scattered across three countries and two continents as they began writing it, with ideas spun across Cyberspace for months. However, the magic eventually happened collectively in small spaces with the tape running.

SO LONELY IN HEAVEN – THE MESSAGE

The machine is everything we are. It sees everything, hears everything, knows everything and feeds, speeds, drinks us down, spits us out – we lost control of it at the instant of its conception. You may cough, curse and die, but the machine will resurrect you without the flaws, at your peak, smiling from a screen, bidding someone in a lonely room to join you. It’s an invitation from Heaven, where anyone can be anything they want to be, but it’s a Nation of One. You’ll be everything we are. You’ll be a shadow of yourself. You’ll repeat yourself – endlessly. You’ll be desperate for some kind of explanation. You’ll be lonely. So very lonely….

Check ‘Blood Money’ here:

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THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS | photo: Michael McGrath

Morlocks – Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi

Posted: 3 January 2025 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 10th January 2025

Christopher Nosnibor

According to their bio, ‘Morlocks are a Swedish act who combine elements of industrial rock, neo-classical, darkwave and metal with epic production values to create an exciting hybrid sound. Having issued the long-awaited and well received album Praise The Iconoclast in late 2023, they subsequently promoted it with two US tours in 2024, both in support of their friends and occasional collaborators KMFDM.’

Asked about the inspiration behind the song, the band state: “Watch the world from a distance. Get angry at first, but also inspired. Take the darkest parts of it and twist them into something weird, beautiful and batshit insane – something that you could either dance to, brood in the shadows to or scream at the top of your lungs at the moon. Preferably all of the above. Everything can be turned into art, and art must hurt. Situation normal: all fucked up.”

‘Everything can be turned into art, and art must hurt’ is a phrase which stands out here. It may seem somewhat dramatic, but to summarise Buddha’s teaching, ‘all life is suffering’, or ‘life is pain’, and the function or art – true art – is to speak in some way of deep truths of what it is to be human. Art must therefore, reflect life and capture something of the existential anguish of the human condition. If it doesn’t, it isn’t art, it’s mere entertainment. And if the idea that ‘Everything can be turned into art’ may superficially seem somewhat flippant, a diminishment of serious matters, if the work is, indeed art, and not entertainment, then the obverse is true: using the pain of life as source material is the only way to interrogate in appropriate depth those most challenging of issues. In other words, making art from trauma is not reductive or to cheapen the experience – but making entertainment from it very much is.

There’s a snobbery around what constitutes art, even now, despite the breakthroughs made through modernism and postmodernism. It’s as if Duchamps had never pissed on the preconceptions of art for the upper echelons of society who still maintain that art is theatre, is opera, is Shakespeare, that art can only exist in galleries and is broadly of the canon. This is patently bollocks, but what Morlocks do is incorporate these elements of supposed ‘high’ art and toss them into the mix – most adeptly, I would add – with grimy guitars and pounding techno beats. Art and culture and quite different things, and those who are of the opinion that only high culture is art are superior snobs who have no real understanding of art or art history.

The five songs on Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi are therefore very much art, although that doesn’t mean they don’t also entertain. ‘The S.N.A.F.U. Principle v3.0’ arrives in a boldly theatrical sweep of neoclassical strings and grand drama – and then the crunching guitars, thumping mechanised drums and raspy vocals kick in and all hell breaks loose. Combining the hard-edged technoindustrial of KMFDM – which is hardly surprising – with the preposterous orchestral bombast of PIG and Foetus bursting through and ascending to the very heavens, it’s complex and detailed and thrillingly dramatic, orchestral and choral and abrasive all at once.

With tribal drumming and bombastic, widescreen orchestration, ‘March of the Goblins’ has a cinematic quality to it, which sits somewhat at odds with the rather hammy narrative verses. It seems to say ‘yeah, ok, you want strings and huge production and choral backing to think it’s art? Here you go, and we’re going to sing about radioactive dinosaurs like it’s full-on Biblical’. It’s absurd and audacious, and makes for a truly epic seven and a half minutes of theatrical pomp that’s admirable on many levels. Ridiculous, but admirable.

‘The Lake’, split over two parts with a combined running time of over ten minutes explores more atmospheric territory, with graceful, delicate strings, acoustic guitar, and tambourine swirling through swirling mists before breaking through into a surging tower of power, melding crunching metal guitars with progressive extravagance, and medieval folk and martial flourishes.

Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi is remarkably ambitious and unashamedly lavish in every way. Quite how serious are Morlocks? They’re certainly serious about their art. But while delivered straight, one feels there’s an appropriate level of knowingness, self-awareness in their approach to their undertaking. And that is where the art lies: theatre is acting. The stories told are drawn from life, and resonate with emotional truth: but the actors are not the action, and there is a separation between art and artifice. Amor, Monstra Et Horrore Profundi is something special.

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Unit:187 – KillCure

Posted: 22 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Metropolis Records – 6th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Heralding the arrival of their first new music since 2010 (discounting the 2012 remix album, Transfusion), Unit:187 slapped down ‘Dick’ by way of a single, and gave cause for me to prick up my ears.

Their bio explains the ad reason for the extended hiatus:

Founded in 1994, Vancouver’s Unit:187 forged a name for itself with a crushing mix of industrial and metal. After the passing of founding member Tod Law in 2015 & taking time to process the loss, Unit:187 now honours his legacy with KillCure – finishing the songs the band wrote with Tod before his death, as well as new music.

It’s a difficult – and seemingly all-too-common dilemma for bands: what to do when a founding member and key player dies? There is no right or wrong thing to do: for some, their passing equates to the death of the band, for others, pressing on is a way to honour their memory. And fans react to these decisions differently, too: the return of Linkin Park with Emily Armstrong fronting in place of the late Chester Bennington is a perfect example of how divisive these things can be.

Former backing singer Kerry Vink-Peterson has stepped up to front Unit:187, which feels like something of a natural move forward, and when they state that some songs on KillCure are ‘finishing the songs the band wrote with Tod before his death’, that means that his contributions remain intact, and he’s credited on the album. In bringing past and present together in this way, KillCure stands as a transitional album, and in some ways feels like the episodes of Dr Who where the Doctor regenerates.

It’s by no means some maudlin, sentiment-filled baton-passing effort, though. Oh no. KillCure is an album which blasts forth with fist-pumping energy to declare that Unit:187 are undefeated and as fierce as ever. ‘Glamhammer’ swings in with some toppy guitar harmonics, sirens blaring over a juddering synth grind and pumping industrial-strength beat, coming together for a groove-laden swagger, breaking out into a monster chorus with snarling vocals and big power chords. It’s one of those tunes that just grabs you by the throat, and it strongly reminiscent of PIG in the mid-nineties, circa Sinsation and Wrecked.

It sets the template for the album nicely. As much as KillCure is rooted in that milieu of Wax Trax! and KMFDM, Unit:187 dial down the hyperactive aggrotech aspects to deliver something that feels somehow more considered, perhaps owing to the favouring of lower, more conventional ‘rock’ tempos and the guitars having a less processed feel, but it’s dark and aggressive, and ‘Dick’ is exemplary, proving itself as a worthy choice of lead single.

Landing in the middle of the album or what would be the end of side one on an old-school vinyl album release, the brooding – and perhaps appropriately-titled – ‘New Beginning’ slows things down, but amps up the sleaze and grind with some scuzzed-out guitar ripping its way over a stomping beat amidst fizzing electronics.

The second half is straight-up solid: samples abound amidst dense guitars and everything meshes into a relentlessly gritty chug-driven industrial grind. But there’s a certain theatricality to it, a knowingness that’s unstated, understated, but unmistakeably present, and it’s nowhere more apparent than on the raging in-yer-face muscle-flexing of ‘Overrun’.

Concluding the album the title track, with a duel-vocal performance, feels like the perfect summary of where Unit:187 are at, and the perfect intersection between the Tod Law and Kerry Vink-Peterson eras.

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Listen: ’I Choose Violence’ by Psyclon Nine

Posted: 14 December 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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’I Choose Violence’ is the first single from a forthcoming new album by the cult US act Psyclon Nine. Melding elements of Industrial Rock, Metal, Deathcore, Ambient and Trap, band mastermind Nero Bellum states: “I specifically set out to break as many genre limitations as possible with this song, while staying true to the concepts and imagery that Psyclon Nine evokes. Lyrically, it’s a reflection of the world we live in. An anthem for the unseen and unheard.”

Listen here:

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Psyclon Nine will headline a 22 date North American ‘Devils Work’ tour commencing on 31st January 2025, while there are plans to tour Europe later in the year.

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Clan Of Xymox – Blood of Christ

Posted: 2 December 2024 in Albums, Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 6th December 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The pitch:

Clan Of Xymox will release a new EP entitled ‘Blood of Christ’ on 6th December. The title song is also included on ‘Exodus’, the current album by the dark wave wizards released in June 2024, with the EP also including the brand new ‘You’re The One’ plus six remixes of each track for a total running time of 64 minutes.

The reaction:

EP? EP??!! Well, yes, I suppose with fourteen tracks and a running time in excess of an hour, its play is certainly extended. What kind of duration would qualify for a long player, I wonder? On vinyl, this would be a double album at 33rpm. Available as a download only, Blood of Christ retails at the same price as the album which spawned it, Exodus, released in the summer.

Carping and pedantry aside, this is an ambitious project for a single, with the album track accompanied by a non-album B-side – something which is always welcome – and, as advertised, six remixes of each. Does anyone really need six remixes of any song, even the most diehard fan? It’s debatable, although not a debate I’m about to open to the floor.

I suppose electronic music does lend itself more readily to remix treatment than more rock-orientated stuff. The 80s and early 90s witnessed the rise of the remix via the extended 12” mix and then over time, we began to see 12” and CDs with different remixes, which were all about milking fans in order to boost sales and chart positions

As a choice of single, ‘The Blood of Christ’ is a strong one: pumping beat and pulsating bass underpin a solid tune with stacks of atmosphere and a huge, theatrical chorus, straddling the boundaries of both classic and contemporary goth. ‘You’re the One’ is a bit popper, but still driven by those all-essential dark undercurrents.

And so, onto the remixes: the album’s remaining twelve tracks alternate between the two songs, the obvious benefit being that you don’t get back-to-back takes of the same track for half an hour. However, by presenting the same two tracks alternately, it’s a little like the old days of flipping a 7” over and over, only hearing differences and new details with each play, and over the course of an hour and a bit it becomes quite mind-addling, and with both tracks employing similar stabby, undulating synths and tempos, the sameness starts to dull the senses after a while.

Too much of a good thing? Perhaps. And perhaps there’s a time commitment involved in distinguishing between the different versions and finding your favourites, preserved for the serious fan. Individually, the tracks are great, although I’m not convinced any of the remixes really improve on the originals, but presented together in such quantity, it feels like overkill.

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Watch: ‘Let the Flowers Grow’ by Peter Murphy & Boy George

Posted: 8 November 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Legendary artists Peter Murphy and Boy George have combined forces for a gorgeously majestic new single entitled ‘Let The Flowers Grow’. Produced and co-written by Youth, their duet on what is a profoundly emotional orchestral masterpiece is available from today on Metropolis Records.
Murphy recalls: “I was recording my new album in Spain with Youth and, while listening to a playback of a song, I heard another piece of music coming from his mobile phone. It caught my ear for its melodic beauty as well as a Roy Orbison-like voice that was singing it.” Upon learning that it was an unfinished demo written by Boy George, he was intrigued and asked Youth if he could work on the partial song. “In a matter of twenty minutes, we had ‘Flowers…’ finished.”

“When I heard the mix, I was satiated in every way,” beams Boy George. “I have always loved Pete’s voice and his writing on this adds a beautiful darkness. The production feels very epic, like Scott Walker.”

Check it here:

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‘Let The Flowers Grow’ carries an air of elegance, the iconic voices of both singers delivering a message of hope and tolerance. Originally written by Boy George, its initial message was one of personal acceptance about being gay. As the song developed, it took on a more expansive and universal scope, its lyrics extending beyond sexuality and embracing race, gender, creed and religion. “With everything going on in the world about identity, it feels very powerful,” he explains.

The mutual adoration between the duo has spanned decades. “I first met Boy George when he asked to be allowed backstage to meet Howard Devoto when Bauhaus were supporting Magazine,” recalls Murphy. “He struck me as a super-original, self-styled 17th Century fop. The second time I met him was when we walked into the BBC to do ‘Ziggy Stardust’ on Top of the Pops where Culture Club were also making their debut on the show. George greeted me very warmly and I discovered he was a Bauhaus fan.”
With the single unveiled, Boy George adds:“It makes me dizzy and proud,” while Murphy concludes: “Boy George loves it and I’m so glad.”

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PETER MURPHY : photo by Jolene Siana  |  BOY GEORGE : photo by Dean Stockings

Listen: ‘Dick’ by Unit:187

Posted: 30 October 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Founded in 1994 by the Vancouver, Canada-based duo John Morgan and Tod Law, Unit:187 spent less than a year in their studio and playing live at local clubs before landing a record deal with 21st Circuitry Records. A solid debut album entitled Stillborn followed in 1997, with the promotion for it taking in several west coast tours that gained the band a respectable fanbase throughout North America.

Loaded followed a year later, featuring new band members Jed Simon (guitar) and Byron Stroud (bass) of Strapping Young Lad and produced by that band’s leader (and future prog icon) Devin Townsend. The album yielded instant industrial classics that included the title track and a remix of the song ‘Stillborn’ by Rhys Fulber (a member of Front Line Assembly and the producer of Fear Factory at that time).

The third Unit:187 album, Capital Punishment (2002), utilised the electronic programming and production skills of Chris Peterson (also of Front Line Assembly) on several tracks. Its title song kicked off proceedings with a killer groove and mix by Anthony Valcic (a producer of both Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly), the group’s trademark synth riffs, movie samples and driving guitars blazing full-tilt from the start right through to the conclusion of the album.

2010’s Out For Blood saw adjustments to the group line-up, with Chris Peterson becoming a permanent member and guitarist Ross Redhead (Decree) also joining. The album marked a turning point, as they worked tirelessly in the studio to produce raw heavy music that punched fist-first through what they perceived as ‘goth euro-cheese’ by coming up trumps with a solid dose of old-school industrial that hadn’t been heard in years. Mixed by producer Kent ‘hiwatt’ Marshall (another Skinny Puppy cohort), Out For Blood pulled out all the stops to sonically pound eardrums into a memorable pulp, while simultaneously offering its listeners sweet melodies to sing along with long after their sound systems had failed from transistor overload.

Unit:187 singer and frontman Tod Law sadly passed away in 2015, but left a legacy of music that has inspired the band to finally move forward. Now fronted by former backing singer Kerry Vink-Peterson, their upcoming KillCure album continues to pack attitude and punch, albeit with a dancefloor friendly edge. An opening salvo from the record, ‘Dick’, has been made available today as its first single.

Listen here:

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PIG – Feast of Agony

Posted: 14 September 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Metropolis Records – 27th September 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Hot on the sweaty trotters of Red Room, released in May, the Lord of Lard, Raymond Watts has managed to mine fresh truffles for a whole new EP ahead of embarking on an extensive tour of the US, which so happens to take its name from the first track on said EP, ‘Heroin for the Damned’. The fact that this isn’t a set of remixes

The title alone is glorious, and you can almost feel the relish with which Watts conjured up the phrase, wicked, perverse, dark, and equally ostentatious and grand, evoking an image within the realms of The Last Supper but with an S&M slant as the participants dine on an orgy of gore… or something. When it comes to relishing the richness of language and delighting in deliciously devilish wordplay and alliteration, sifting through PIG’s catalogue for titles and lyrics (there’s a suitably extravagant book containing all of them just out) provides abundant evidence that Watts really gets kicks from it.

It’s also clear he is absolutely loving the whole self-styled industrial rock-god posturing, hamming it up in leather and mesh, and simply the whole music-making thing, perhaps more than at any point in his career. Instead of being awkward about self-promotion, he’s fully embracing its absurdity, and in a genre that’s largely dominated by serious, angry people, PIG stand out as being rather less po-faced, and altogether more fun than your average industrial act. I’m not sure I’ve seen Al Jourgensen or Trent Reznor posting pics on Facebook hugging their pooches.

That doesn’t mean that the music is any less serious. Watts and his various collaborators really know how to bring a crunching riff and a stonking beat, and, occasionally, having taken early cues from the legendary JG Thirlwell, spin in some bombastic strings and grand orchestral strikes. And Feast of Agony is dark, heavy, intense, and marks a strong return to the more experimental 90s work following a pursuit of an altogether glammier sound of late.

‘Heroin for the Damned’ – the opium of the people for the 21st Century, perhaps – starts low, slow, and sinister, Watts’ vocal a croak amidst a dank electronic swamp before a steady riff, laden with grit, grinds in, rubbing hard against a lowdown pulsating synth groove. It’s a bit NIN circa The Downward Spiral, but equally it’s quintessentially 90s PIG, and lands a monster chorus that combines the raging roar of Sinsation and the grainy grooves of Praise the Lard with gushing gospel grandeur – something that really dominates the final track, the Jim Davies remix of ‘Baptise, Bless, Bleed.’ Piano and bold orchestral sweeps meld with stark synths and crunching guitars on ‘Fallout’, before Watts comes on like Bowie on the slow-paced anthemic ‘Comedown’, while the verses of ‘Hand of Mercy’ owe more to Prince.

It’s a PIG release and therefore it’s a pure [serial killer] thriller, alright – but even within the now-expansive catalogue, Feast of Agony is a strong entry.

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