Review Summary: Steps to heaven thanks to an electronic hardcore benefit from the Eighties
The fourth and last studio album 'A Fridge Fulla Bribes' from 1989 was no longer recorded together: Harry Luehr still programmed synthesizers and drums, but the mixing was now entirely in the hands of Paal and some of his intimates. Nevertheless - or for that very reason - the acoustic convolute mixed in two sessions in December 1989 is self-confidently described in the subtitle as an 'electronic hardcore benefit' for
Abortive Gasp.
As a result, the album comes across as very hard, wild and unstructured, and its sound design with a lot of distortion and guitar use is most reminiscent of post-industrial bands like Ministry or Revolting Cocks from the style-setting US label Waxtrax, which dominated the second half of the eighties together with the influential Alan Jourgensen. The most famous track of the album is the opener '(Steps to Heaven) Morph Pusher', which the band, however, does not want to be understood as a clandestine support of drug consumption. Quite the contrary: Here, the mercilessly driving sequencer sound and the lyrics smugly and sarcastically delivered by Paal rather evoke associations to a morphine-soaked dystopia, which could have been influenced by George Lucas' early work THX 1138'.
Also outstanding is the instrumental track '(Final Fracas) Chains', which offers uncompromisingly hard electro-industrial noise music that is not very danceable, but wears you out all the more for it. On the second side of the album, the industrial dancefloor dominates in the heavily overdriven disco sound around the tracks 'Disco Trauma' and 'Smashed My T.V.'.
