Review Summary: Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the dark side.
Irma Grese was one despicable excuse for a human being. Behind those cold, soulless eyes, that fresh, youthful face and those flowing blonde locks lurked a true monster with a heart full of hatred for humanity. She was well known to be one of the sickest most morally depraved sociopaths in the Nazi camp. Her barbaric legacy amongst her prisoners was infamous and extremely well documented which would go on to both lead to her execution at the age of 22 and to serve as exploitation film inspiration just some thirty years later. She was dubbed "the beautiful beast" by her prisoners because she was a physically beautiful and stylish woman who routinely and happily committed ghastly crimes against humanity. This morbid dichotomy between outer beauty and inner ugliness would serve as a curious model of musical inspiration for Boston based musician John Zewizz. Known for his sexually provocative works in Sleep Chamber he would go on to further push the envelope in his side project Women of the SS.
"The Call To All Woman" was released back in 1986 and heavily incorporated the themes of female bondage, female sexuality, female dominance and the unrepentant evil of Irma Grese into a minimalist yet harrowing soundscape. Synth driven with vocal samples, loops, soundbites, moaning and other provocative musical techniques, "Thee Call To All Woman" is a darkly atmospheric record that fully grips your attention with it's sexually charged air of morbidness. The sound coalesces around a toxic stirring of dark ambient, noise and industrial waters with grainy production values to solidify this new product. This in turn could potentially prove to be too unsettling of a listen for the casual industrial and dark ambient listeners who aren't so open to breaching such a abhorrent topic. The density of the subject matter for me personally strengthens the music's lasting power. The image and personality of Irma, her grisly acts and the unsettling dichotomy of beauty and ugliness darken this music to an unprecedented degree even if it's not musically a particularity loud or violent release. The imagery perfectly fuses with the musical backdrop to form a strong cohesive bond, a bond that transfers to the listener's conscious and makes them listen deeply while trying to picture the horror that went on in those camps at the same time.
The music is quite calm but calm in the sense of one walking around alone in a abandoned building or a desolate, forgotten graveyard with a terribly checkered past. The atmosphere here is consistently eerie, akin to Attrition's Death House but sounding much more claustrophobic and much more ominous. This would be a great album to recommend to the open minded fans of the dark ambient, industrial and noise genres that are looking to add to their collection.
