The Leather Nun were a Swedish group, featuring famed musician, actor, and opera writer Freddie Wadling, whose styles ranged from garage rock to industrial. Their debut EP, and most acclaimed work, Slow Death doesn’t so much mix these two styles as much as it presents separate forays into each. The EP starts off with one of the purest Garage songs this reviewer has ever heard, “No Rule”. The guitars are filthy and vocalist Jonas Almquist’s vocals, while corny, are gravelly as hell and bring a real kickass attitude to the music, belting the chorus “No more silly rules and no more law and order”. Truly a classic to the genre.
After this, however, the EP takes a very drastic avant-garde turn, as they start to explore into their more industrial sound. “Death Threats” finds The Leather Nun at their most experimental, with metallic loops, grating high frequency machinery-noise and spoken vocals running through a host of unintelligible effects and filters. The title track then reels back on the weirdness a tad, but holds up the grim atmosphere of the EP quite nicely, with Almquist groaning and mumbling “90 percent burns, with 55 hours to live, it’s a slow death” over a steady, hypnotic bassline, while more machine-like guitar quirks sporadically rearing their ugly head over the five and a half minute track.
The album’s closer, “Ensam I Natt” starts out like another awesome garage rock song, but lasts about thirteen seconds and fades out before it can even start to rock as hard as “No Rule”. I guess the point of this was to give the more garage-y fans a severe case of blue balls, as it did to me, because if you’re into that kind of BDSM stuff then you’ll be into this EP’s darkly twisted atmosphere. But if you’re into rockin’ songs that give no f
ucks then check out “No Rule” at the very least, as it’s truly an amazing song. This reviewer probably would have enjoyed a few more tracks like “No Rule”, but I guess the lack of those is what makes that song so special. Fans of garage rock and industrial alike can certainly get something out of this, and if you’re into both then it will definitely provide you with twelve minutes of kinky pleasure that you goddamn freakazoids are looking for.
