Review Summary: An album that offers up some of the bands earliest material, becoming a delightful surprise to those who choose to give it a chance.
Wumpscut has been around seemingly forever, the band being just as old as I am. Rudolf Ratzinger has been tearing up club floors ever since the bands inception, the very first E.P.
Defcon featuring the aged, yet still quite good, track “Pornography.” While some might consider it a crime to have never heard of one of the busiest disc jockey in the genre it wasn't I had heard “Hang Him Higher” that my interest was piqued enough to actually look up who in the world had created such a wonderfully addictive harsh sounding track. Keystrokes later found me peering at the wonder that is
BlutKind, the 33 track monster of a release featuring some of the earliest recorded material from Wumpscut as well as the new tracks “Hang Him Higher” and “Praise Your Fears.” I had heard that this was a hard introductory album to the band, but once again my belief that people on Amazon are none to bright was validated.
Put rather bluntly
BlutKind deceives. This lovely little child starts off with “Hang Him Higher,” a track seemingly meant to inspire controversy wherever a video using it appears. Featuring lyrics that allude towards the hatred that Jews must harbor for Adolf Hitler it is both emotional and completely enthralling, when I realized that it was the work of only one man my respect and love for the band rose ten-fold. Even while writing this I can't help but sway back and forth to the pervasively simple beat, harsh repeated cries of “We came!” and it's lightly synthed backdrop. This is how the album draws you in, and if you were new to genre you'd be eagerly awaiting that next track to start, for those harsh vocals to continue. Except they don't, unbeknown to you the entire two disc album only has a handful of fully vocalized tracks. If you can live with this truth then the entire experience that is
BlutKind will begin to overwhelm you.
How Rudy is able to create such a masterful atmosphere all by himself is something I doubt I'll ever know, the album is filled to the brim with the feeling of being in some bizarre machine shop. Beats are as steady as robotic impact guns, the synths are as if the sparks from the wielders guns took up a desire to make music, and the occasion vocal snippets similar to rivets driving the point home. These mainly instrumental tracks are are rather lengthy, yet none overstay their welcome as each has its own identity firmly stamped on its forehead. “Neolith” is an excellent example of this, and is one of my favorite tracks from the first disc. Starting with a light air to it in comparison to the rest of the album it's almost an interlude the way the synths are played off one another, ensuring that this track stands out from those that have come before and have yet to be. Continuing on gracefully it fades around the 2:01 mark only to have a prominent heart like beat start, this soon fades into the background as the track is revived and continues to sway into the distortions that begin to signal its end.
Moments like these are abundant throughout
BlutKind, and it stands strong because of it. Due to the early nature of the vast majority of the tracks there is a rawness, an emotion present that I find severely lacking in most modern day industrial music. This aged quality puts the largely instrumental tracks on par with that of “Hang Him Higher” and “Praise Your Fears.” For while these two are focused more on being dance-able/club friendly they lack the atmosphere that gives this bloody child life, not to mention making it a force to be reckoned with. If you can find the time give the album a listen in its entirety, you might be surprised at how well you become lost in what Wumpscut has created.
