Review Summary: Best release since Judgement
Ronan Harris’ new offering is similar to the last five or so: A routine affair with some excellent notes, and with an overall character unique to the band. But it’s like the usual single-malts you might find in a well-stocked bar – nothing you haven’t tasted before.
That being said, the music on here sounds better than anything I’ve heard from VNV Nation in years. Now it’s just a matter of whether or not I can reconcile the music with his singing style. During
Empires, Harris moved away from a somewhat monotone delivery and adopted a more free-wheeling style, a “go ahead and improvise, you know, just sing how you feel at the moment” style inherited from blues that is characteristic of all immensely successful bands but that occasionally gets on my nerves.
James Hetfield’s style underwent a similar evolution. For example, the chorus of the middle section of Master of Puppets (
master, master, where’s the dreams that I’ve been after?) consists of about four or five uniform tones that are then repeated in the next verse. In contrast, Enter Sandman’s chorus has at least ten, and maybe more, but it’s hard to tell because it’s filled with a bunch of microtones in the transitions between them. On our album here, Electric Sun, the track “Sunflare” is especially loaded with this wavery kind of thing. It usually strikes me in a way similar to the unsavory bite I receive when someone puts too much cilantro in my burrito. But that’s just me -- this is definitely a track to listen to if you like that style.
Outside of the slow songs, the melody types and thump-thump rhythms on this album are regulation-issue VNV Nation. I think one thing that
has changed, or at least evolved more, is Ronan's command of harmony. My guess is that when he orchestrated a bunch of VNV Nation songs around 2014, he spent a lot of time with classical harmonic theory, and it paid off here. The harmonies on this album sound, as they do also on Rammstein's last two releases, far more complex than on older albums. I just wish I had the training to prove it.
Anyway, much of Ronan’s singing on this album strikes me as relatively conservative -- for him -- and reminiscent of the earlier style. Despite some overall tinny production, I’ll be giving most of the album, but especially “Prophet” and “Wait,” more play in the days to come, starting with the first song -- the title track "Electric Sun" is a superb opening. Depeche Mode fans should definitely give this last one a try. I rarely like VNV Nation’s slow music, but that track might come to be a classic.
