Review Summary: That happened
The most divisive Whitehouse release in their entire career.
Cruise has never really found its place in the hallowed halls of Power Electronics. At the time of its production, Steve Albini had left and moved on to other projects (he did some stuff on
Public though), leaving Bennet and Sotos once again taking the reigns. At its core,
Cruise is a return to the basics of Whitehouse, whether it achieves that in the proper form depends on who you talk to.
When we talk about mediocre tracks, we must look no further than
Movement 2000, just a continuous distorted noise with barely any effort to it whatsoever.
Scapegoat does the same thing but at a higher frequency and adds beats every now and again.
Public once again utilizes recorded testimony of victims of abuse, in a once again uninteresting form of artistic expression. It becomes clear that many of these tracks had zero thought put into them, with almost no creative additives being used to boost the quality of the tracks.
Despite this, the album has it's share of good tracks.
Princess Disease is a powerful 3 minutes of yelling and heavy distortion, and William's vocals are given much more clarity to them.
Dance of Desperate Breath has William whispering some snuff narrative over the backdrop of crowds of people interacting normally. The oddly off putting combination gets even weirder when
A Cunt Like You finishes off the album. It starts off with crazy distortion that boosts in and out for a bit before William begins screeching in proper
Birthdeath Experience fashion. It then cuts straight to massive bloated feedback beeping endlessly, bombarding your ears until you can no longer stomach it.
Cruise was most obviously designed to capitalize off of the success of
Mummy and Daddy. The problem, though, is that
Mummy and Daddy had run its course, and nobody was exactly screaming for a sequel to
Private. Was
Cruise good？ Yes. Was it bad？ Yes.
So then what the Hell was it？
God knows because I sure don't. I don't know what to make of this and I fail to understand William's thought process as he was making it. At times it shows true creativity and manic intensity, at others it just lags behind and fails to enthrall.
Cruise would quickly fade into obscurity after
Birdseed anyways so I suppose Bennett's plan failed. Whatever plan that was.
