Review Summary: My heart's in my throat
Passion is one of the greatest emotions we feel. It’s unrelenting, unrestrainable, and sometimes plain ineffable. You don’t exactly need to know where it comes from to understand or feel it; you just know that it's there, an enveloping presence. No better album exists on the basis of pure passion than Human Waste Project’s
e-lux (1997), an album which mixes this feeling with metallic aggression so perfectly in order to produce one of the most underrated alternative (metal) albums of all time.
From the first two snare hits of “Disease”, you know that
e-lux is absaloutely chaotic, as clattering drums and thick, crunchy guitars and pedal effects all throw themselves at your ears. This unrelentend musical swagger dominates tracks like “Drugstore”, “Hold Me Down” and “Powerstrip”, and although at times it feels like things could fall apart at any moment, the instrumentation manages to coalesce into an effective and varied whole whist bearing enough restraint to not overpower one another. A more subdued yet powered approach is utilized on “Exit Wound”, “Interlude” and “Dog”, which gives the album nice variety and breaks in pace which prevents it from falling into monotony. Now, I will concede that
e-lux isn’t a revolutionary work of art in terms of its overall technicality and compositions, but what it has compared to the forthcoming swathe of nu metal that would follow (and, ultimately, swallow) the album’s release, is enough inventiveness, and more importantly, character and personality.
The person responsible for the latter of those points would be none other than Aimee Echo. As she openly declares on “Disease”, Aimee is “just a girl without apology” whose seductive-yet-volatile mix of Courtney Love and Siouxsie-Banshee singing and screaming cuts through
e-lux’s musical strife to compete with, and complete, its grungy, romantic and somewhat gothy aesthetics. Singing largely dominates “Electra” and “One Night in Spain…”, the latter being the album’s most vulnerable and accessible track, although when needed she can easily balance the power and bring out throat-destroying screams on command. Liquidity is a recurring motif that practically *oozes* out of Aimee’s lyrics, which together make for a raw, discomforting yet completely enthralling experience and approach to writing about love and romance:
“My lover gone,
Dripped from my lips
Like liquid through me
So elusive…”
[...]
“I drank from your hand,
I drank from your mouth
You poured into me
Until I was drowned
I had no breath,
Was drunk on you
I would have given
It all to you…”
(—“Exit Wound”)
At times you can certainly feel a level of tension and discordance between the more melodic Aimee and the rest of the band, but this difference actually benefits
e-lux overall, giving it more of life and personality than it would have warranted than if it used a more, er, consistent and
normal approach. Which alone sums up this album and why it’s so f-cking good; it’s super weird, super exciting and super f-king awesome in how it presents itself. I cannot implore you enough; go listen to this album, tell your friends about it, burn CD-R’s and leave them in malls and subway stations if you want to. It might not be for everyone, but it needs to be heard.
5/5
