Review Summary: Same style of dish, with new spices
In his excellent review for “Forest of the Impaled,” Sputnik staff member Simon K wrote that Johan Van Roy has used “the same one-trick-pony routine his entire career,” and that “it brings out a level of curiosity on how Van Roy has managed to stay afloat this long.”
This album is another one-trick-pony show, and if you were bored with that show on the other albums, then you’ll probably be bored with this one. But if you’re a fan, sameness of style is good news; it’s what you come to expect: At an album rate of around one per five years, and only a handful of tracks per album, there’s just not enough material for a fan to get tired of.
I assume that for some artists this has the effect of enslaving them to a style, and they get frustrated when they’re not able to try new things. Johan Van Roy does try new things on each album, “spices” in Simon K’s words, but they’re tiny changes that are probably only noticeable is you’re interested enough to listen for them.
Among the new sounds on this album that work well:
1.His experiment with vibrato (for lack of a better word) in his vocals on “God of Destruction.” Such vibrato normally has a hideous, bluesy, jazzy effect that turns me right off. That stuff is okay in Rock, but Electro-Industrial? Surprisingly, though, it sounds like he stays tonal: The notes of the vibrato don’t wander around, they don’t hit “blue” notes, but stay in the key of the music, making it more like Bach than Duke Ellington. Given that both Van Roy and Bach are Germanics working in the same harmonic system, that’s probably not a coincidence.
2.His experiment with female vocals on “Land of Roses.” Gothic lady-song is a staple of other bands in that scene: Outside of bands like
I:Scintilla and
Blutengel, where women are leaders,
God Module,
Acylum,
Wumpscut and
Velvet Acid Christ have all written first-rate songs with female vocals. But I think it’s a first in Suicide Commando. Charlotte Nuytkens sang for Van Roy on this track, and it works great. The electro riff is one of the best on the album, so I’m a little disappointed that it’s not HIS voice over the top of it, but that’s just my whiny fan-voice talking. It’s still a cool song.
One great thing about this album is that it was released with the re-mixes, so I didn’t have to wait for the “deluxe.” This is critical for this particular album, because I value C-Lekktor’s remix of “Bang Bang Bang” a little more than the original.
Among the new sounds that don’t really work:
3. He decided to leave the sound of his voice out completely on a number of songs. That’s a bummer – I only rarely like instrumentals, and these are no exceptions. “Destroyer of Worlds” has the basics of a great song, but it doesn’t go anywhere, and I get bored. There are a small handful of instrumentals that are truly “great”: Metallica created a couple classics on the early albums, and I’ve revisited Wumpscut’s “Mankind’s Disease” from Wreath of Barbs and “Killuh” from Siamese numerous times. But of the twenty-odd instrumentals Wumpscut wrote, those and maybe two others are the only ones that I ever bother listening to. Industrial music is just too repetitive to be interesting without vocals.
My other criticism is not a criticism of the album, but the way that most albums are released on streaming services these days: With sequential singles leading up to the full album. Destruction, Manimal, Kreator, Sabaton, Ghost, Rammstein -- I'd already heard some of the best songs before their albums were released. The singles from this album started getting released last October, and it contains three remixes from older songs in the main body of the tracklist. So by the time it came out last week there were only five songs that I hadn’t heard. I miss the days when a new album came out and ALL the songs were new.
But as long as he’s still creating music I’m happy to have a Coke and a smile, and then shut the f*#$ up and enjoy the music.
Some of Charlotte Nuytkens work outside Suicide Commando provides an interesting contrast to her work on this album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vejZevd5Va8
