Review Summary: Not as groundbreaking as Birthdeath Experience, Total Sex is still an amazing album packed with seriously excellent tracks.
As
Birthdeath Experience changed the face of Power Electronics, William Bennett was not about to stop now. Within that same year, Whitehouse would release
Total Sex, another of Whitehouse's most finest offerings.
We start off with
Total Sex and
Phaseday, two tracks which rely heavily on a heavy radio static while William screams into the track. Despite his yelling, his volume is toned down heavily, giving an almost psychedelic feeling. In fact, most of Total Sex has a psychedelic feel to it.
Phaseday achieves this a little better than
Total Sex does, but both tracks clearly show that this album is taking a different route from
Birthdeath Experience.
Dominate You returns to the heavy "bleeping" from
Birthdeath Experience but doesn't waste this opportunity as William's vocals are turned down again.
Dominate You has a very soft feeling compared to the rest of the record and the echo was used much more frequently than in the previous two tracks. Eventually, as the track moves forward, the synths begin to change their pattern dramatically and increase their speed. After that is
Politics, a short track that has a bit of static followed by continuous silence.
Roller Coaster continues with more static and muffled synths.
Roller Coaster is one of the more diverse tracks on the record as the synths and static work in harmony with Bennett's small yelping. It seems that the volume on William's screaming gets lower every track. By the time
Ultrasadism rolls around, William's screaming just becomes another static added to the rest of the album. It does hamper what could have been a really interesting hybrid between psychedelia and power electronics. Nevertheless,
Total Sex was a continuation of the peak of Whitehouse and it supplies enough interesting tracks to present a thoroughly enjoyable album.
