Godflesh - Purge (2023)

Country: UK
Style: Industrial Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 9 Jun 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Wikipedia

It's pretty much a given to point out that Godflesh are an acquired taste, but their extreme sound is a fascinating one. I'm no expert, but I'm told that this ninth album by them hearkens back to an earlier release, 1992's Pure, which has been retroactively regarded as one of the first releases in a genre that's become known as post-metal. What it boils down to is a combination of wall of sound guitars right out of extreme metal, shouted vocals that doesn't always remind of hardcore shouts and programmed drums that often drift into hip hop beats.

It's a unique and fascinating approach and it trawls a lot of different influences together that we'd rarely hear in the same sentence. Land Lord, for instance, sounds like a merger of the Prodigy with Monotheist-era Celtic Frost. Justin Broadrick certainly channels some Tom G. Warrior in his vocals on this one. However, his guitar often shifts into a sort of Rage Against the Machine feedback vibe for emphasis. There's also a serious reliance on repetition, which works for heavy industrial metal, of course, but also reminds of early avant garde pioneers like Coil or Einstürzende Neubauten and the experimental rock band Swans.

With such a focus on repetition, it's often easier to listen to these pieces of music as a form of dark meditation or a mood setter rather than as songs per se. Industrial was named because of how its sound resembled the sound of an industrial society and this album is often like hanging out in a big and noisy factory and filtering out the people to soak in the ambience of pounding machinery and, in the spirit of John Cage, hearing its rhythms and pitches become music. As such, it's not perhaps too surprising to hear Kraftwerk here on pieces like Lazarus Leper, even Philip Glass in the opener and initial single, Nero.

Another way to look at it is the way that Broadrick himself looks at it. Purge isn't just the title of a Godflesh album, it's the word he uses to describe the way he uses the music he creates with bassist and fellow programmer Ben Green as a "temporary relief" from autism and PTSD. It seems like it's a dark refuge but then Broadrick was a member of Napalm Death for a while; he's on the first side of their debut album, Scum, but left before the second was recorded. This slower, but just as heavy music, with its rigid repetition, could easily be seen as a hypnotic dirge for fans of extreme sounds. I salute it even more if it has therapeutic qualities.

Which tracks leap out to grab people may depend on taste but I'm not finding any real logic to it. It doesn't surprise me that I dig Land Lord, with its up tempo beats and echoes of Celtic Frost, but I'd suggest that Mythology of Self trawls in the Frosties too and I'm not as fond of that one. Why? I'm not entirely sure. It's slower and even more bludgeoning and the vocals are harsher. I ought to dig it more than I do, but it just didn't connect. On the other hand, I'd easily list The Father as another favourite and that's far more subtle, with the guitars lower in the mix and a very different texture.

At the end of the day, of course, this isn't going to convert anyone. If you're into Godflesh's brutal and uniquely uncompromising sonic assaults, then this is another must purchase for you. If you're not, then this isn't going to be a Road to Damascus moment for you. You're not going to discover a sudden appreciation. The only new fans it's going to find are those who hear Godflesh for the first time here, which is not particularly likely in an algorithm-driven era of tailored recommendations. And, right now, you know which of those three categories you are. If you're not the first two, what does this review prompt you to do? If it's to run screaming into the night, it's not for you, but, if it's piquing your interest, let me be the one to introduce you to something new.

Tanzwut - Silberne Hochzeit (2023)

Country: Germany
Style: NDH/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date:24 Feb 2023
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

I liked Tanzwut's previous album, Die Tanzwut kehrt zurück, released two years ago, and I like this one too, which continues their gradual shift from medieval metal through NDH to industrial, even though this isn't really a new album. It's a celebration of an album, a sort of greatest hits package to commemorate a quarter of a century as a touring band, but each track is a re-recorded version from the studio. They've recorded a dozen albums but everything here is sourced from three very specific releases that came out before they'd found their way into a particular sound.

Now, to be fair, I wouldn't say that they've cemented their sound yet, each succeeding album a bit further down a musical path, but this deliberately takes tracks from their second, third and fourth albums and retells them in a style similar to what they play today. Labyrinth der Sinne is easily the most represented, with seven out of twelve tracks coming from that second album from 2000. That leaves three from their third, 2003's Ihr wolltet Spass, and a three song set from Schattenreiter in 2006. It's fascinating to see how varied these remain, even played with a consistent approach.

The first four set most of the tone for the album. Labyrinth, the kinda sorta title track to Labyrinth der Sinne, opens up and is immediately a highlight, bouncy and in your face throughout, bagpipes leading the melodic line over a driving NDH beat. It's worth reminding that five of seven members of Tanzwut play bagpipes and two are dedicated to pipes and shawms, so they're never far away. In most of this material, they hold back to serve as emphasis when the song needs it but then soar on top of everything else when it gets going.

Ihr wolltet Spass and Meer, both from the third album, add new elements. The latter is softer with a drop down from the typical opening to a warmer sound. Even when it ramps up in the bridge, the usual edges are still smoothed off. The former is a gem, dropping into Gogol Bordello-esque punky folk music. I'm sure I've heard some early Tanzwut but it's been so long that I can't remember the albums. This is the point at which I regretted that and wanted to dive back into those early albums to remind myself what they sounded like.

The fourth of the opening quartet is Was soll der Teufel im Paradies, another from Labyrinth der Sinne and the first of four tracks in a row to hail from that album. This one adds orchestration as a layer, mostly behind the sound but occasionally with strings taking the foreground. It ends with a tasty duet between pipes and strings, which is a fascinating touch and one exclusive to this track. Each of these four has its own unique touch, while staying true to the overarching sound. Most of what follows works with those approaches afresh, just in different proportions. That doesn't mean that there aren't other touches worth mentioning though.

Lügner is a stalker of a song, slow and heavy but with serious emphasis, so we're unable to ignore it. In its quieter sections, the pipes take a strong lead and the electronics trawl in some distortion for effect. In its more urgent sections, it plays up the NDH aspect to the band. There's Rammstein in all of these songs but none of them consistently sound like Rammstein with bagpipes. This one is closer than most, even though it sounds like a regular bagpipe band at points too, sans all metal elements. The one that plays my local renaissance festival has released albums that pair the pipes and drums with electronica and they're not unlike this.

The most unexpected touch comes on Im tiefen Gras. It starts with a guitar line that wouldn't be at all out of place in alt country and quickly develops into a psychobilly bounce. This is one of a trio of songs from Schattenreiter and it's the other track that makes me want to follow up by visiting the original. It suddenly seems odd that these two aren't from the most represented album, but that may not mean much. Then again, if there's a third, it's the urgent punk of Nein nein, another one from Ihr wolltet Spass, that closes out the album.

I'm not sure how essential this will be for Tanzwut fans who remember the originals. I'd have to go back to hear them again to comment and I want to do that free of motive. I'm not a die hard fan of the band, but I like what they do and I like this, even if it isn't essential. It's an odd marker for this live anniversary and I wonder why they didn't put out an equivalent recorded live. Maybe that will be next.

Stabbing Westward - Chasing Ghosts (2022)

Country: USA
Style: Industrial Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Mar 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

This is Stabbing Westward's first album since 2001, mostly because they split up after a self-titled album in 2001 that was poorly received and they stayed split up until officially reuniting for a pair of thirtieth anniversary shows in 2016. However, they obviously felt it and started releasing some new material, including a couple of EPs in 2020. I gave Dead and Gone a 6/10 not for lack of quality but because of how skimpy it was, teasing with three new songs and padding out with a couple of remixes. Clearly, it was always going to be about the next album, and that's finally here.

It's a good one too, if you're into their brand of industrial rock music. There's Nine Inch Nails to be found in the majority of the songs here, starting with a pair of driving openers, I am Nothing and Damaged Goods, but I never got the feeling that the band were flirting on the edge the way Trent Reznor is so good at. T he closest to out of control it gets is when Dead & Gone decides to rage. This is always controlled music and, when they shift more into a radio friendly European industrial pop vein on Cold, with its clean vocals, atmospheric keyboards and throbbing beats, it's all the more controlled. That does heavy up as it goes, but again it never has to haul out a safe word.

And that's a particularly American nineties alternative vibe. These are self-deprecating songs, to the point of being eloquent self-hate. "I know you wanna to fix me, but I am damaged far beyond repair," begins Damaged Goods. "I was broken when you met me, and entropy has carried on from there." That's a great lyric, as are many here, but it's easier to take from a young band who might never grow up to be an old band than it is from, well, an old band. Lead vocalist Christopher Hall, a fixture of the band since it's outset, turns 57 this year.

This whole approach gets old for me. The lyrics to Push are well written and utterly accurate from the perspective of an insecure kid struggling with mental issues in a tough high school. Even when things go well, they can't believe that it's really happening. "I never truly believed that I deserved you; why would someone like you love someone like me? I felt this self-destructive need to test you to justify my insecurities." This song, with its refrain of "All I want is you to want me" feels like it's a paeon to an entire generation, merely written thirty years late. It's brilliant stuff and it's given plenty of room to breathe, an effortless seven and a half minutes. Will it find an audience in 2022, when sung by a band the age of that insecure kid's grandparents? That's the question.

I don't know, but then I'm a grandparent too, even if I'm not listening out of nostalgia. The heyday of this band was later than the time I was deep diving into rock and metal in my youth, so I caught it only peripherally and at a point where these lyrics felt passé. What I got out of this was mostly a sense of urgency, driven for the most part by Bobby Amaro's drums, even though I'm surprised by the fact that he actually has a drumkit. There's so much electronica here, albeit fundamentally to provide texture, that I half expected the beat to be the work of a programmed drum machine.

It's also a surprise that there are two guitarists, Carlton Bost dedicated to that task and founder member Walter Flakus playing one in addition to his keyboard work. It's surprising because I found the guitars most effective at deepening the beat, making it heavier and smoother at once, rather than actually driving the songs. Neither guitarist does anything particularly fancy, though Flakus does handle that through his keyboards and samples. That's where all the texture is.

And so I liked this album without ever being blown away by it. It felt like a cross between Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode and maybe some more progressive post-punk band, all amped up to almost the point where the distortion becomes problematic and maybe sometimes beyond it. Push is where it all comes together, and The End is a standout too, but there are moments in many of these songs, sometimes in their melodies or tempo shifts but mostly for me with the beats and textures.

Napalm Death - Resentment is Always Seismic: A Final Throw of Throes (2022)

Country: UK
Style: Death Metal/Industrial
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 11 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

It still feels strange to realise that Napalm Death are forty years into their career and they have a lucky thirteen studio albums to their name, the most recent of which made a whole slew of end of year charts in 2020 and got an 8/10 from me here at Apocalypse Later. This isn't number fourteen; it's a mini album made up of material that didn't make it onto that album, and it's as inconsistent as that might make it seem, but some of it is powerful stuff indeed, like the blistering two minute punk onslaught that is By Proxy. It isn't the grindcore of their debut album, which was really a pair of mini albums packaged together, but it hearkens back to even earlier anarcho-punk material, as did some of the material on that thirteenth album, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism.

If that's the best song, there's a whole gradient of material behind it. Narcissus is a strong opener that fits very well with the best of the two covers on the album, Don't Need It, a Bad Brains track from their self-titled debut album back in 1982. It's a frantic but very true take on that original, a more appropriate cover here than the song I remember best from that album, Pay to Cum. Also of note are the two songs that play as a consistent double bill in between the covers. I'd have to give the edge to Man Bites Dogged, a chugger rather than a blisterer with its roots in thrash metal but Slaver Through a Repeat Performance is pretty close.

So far, that's all fairly expected for a band who have morphed over the decades from anarcho-punk to grindcore to death metal. Even when they shift into punk or flirt with thrash, they're immensely recognisable as Napalm Death. That starts to change when they shift into more unusual territory, something that they did on A Bellyful of Salt and Spleen, the closer to Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism and a song that almost felt out of place there. It feels like it has a lot more in common with the various tracks here that also delve deep into industrial.

The best of these, to my ears, is Resentment Always Simmers, a slower song in between Narcissus and the vicious assault of By Proxy, but a heavy one nonetheless. It plays well to me and tells me in no uncertain terms that the Napalms doing industrial can work within the confines of my personal taste, which dabbles in but has never dived into that genre. However, it doesn't work for me on the other cover here, which is of a 1988 single called People Pie by Slab!, a British industrial band. It's easily my least favourite piece of music here, which means that the closer is above it.

I've left that for last not because it's the closer or because I particularly like it, but it's interesting in ways that People Pie isn't. It's called Resentment is Always Seismic (Dark Sky Burial Dirge) and I guess that makes it the surprising title track. It's absolutely the dirge that its name suggests and I was immediately reminded of how Celtic Frost dabbled in industrial way back in the day, but taken to the degree of heaviness they reached much later with Monotheist. I remember mentioning the Frosties in my review of Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism too and it really shouldn't surprise to see them as an influence on Napalm Death. I wonder if they ever delved further back down that path.

So this is a mixed bag, as such collections of extra tracks tend to be, but it's an interesting one. The best songs here are easily worthy of sitting on a regular album and the worst are still unusual enough to be worth a listen, even if they wouldn't remotely fit on a regular release.

Death SS - X (2021)

Country: Italy
Style: Industrial Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 29 Oct 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Death SS have been around since 1977, with a couple of breaks, though they haven't crossed my radar often since then. With this tenth album behind me, I'm eager to hear their early work, not that there is much of that. Their debut, ...in Death of Steve Sylvester (the SS of the title, which does not appear to have any Nazi connection), didn't show up until 1988 and they only managed three more before the year 2000. Given that they split up for four years a decade or so ago, they've clearly been busier in the 21st century than previously.

I heard that they had moved over time from heavy metal to doom metal to industrial metal but, even if that's true, it's not the whole story. This album starts out as traditional heavy metal, reminding me of Mercyful Fate but with Alice Cooper at the mike rather than the falsetto of King Diamond. It's hard not to see this as "horror music" too, the organ and effects at the outset of Zora guaranteeing that if the chanting monks in The Black Plague didn't trigger that thinking a song earlier. The industrial side manifests in Under Satan's Sun, effectively so without ever taking over.

Just as I wouldn't call this an industrial metal album, even though there's industrial in it, there's one other influence I kept hearing that doesn't take over and that's gothic rock. This is not a gothic rock album either, but there's often a driving anthemic groove that reminds me of gothic rock, especially the Sisters of Mercy. It's here on The Temple of the Rain and The World is Doomed but it's most overt on The Rebel God, which nails its groove so well that it's impossible to ignore it once it gets going. It's initially just a good song but, by the time it gets past its first chorus, it's the sort of good song that'll have you looking up from the bar and suddenly finding yourself on the dancefloor.

So far into their career, I have a feeling that Death SS wrote this with all their different styles in mind, but the shifts can be a little jarring. It's not so bad in the first half, as we move from heavy metal into overt horror rock, then though the gothic industrial drive back to the most emphatically heavy metal song, Ride the Dragon. After that point, it's a bit more awkward.

Suspiria (Queen of the Dead) is clearly horror rock, with characterful bookends—a harpsichord and an accordion at one end and more accordion, female voice and violin at the other—but it's slower, much slower, and more textured. It's notably gothic, drenched in velvet and fog, and it feels like the texture is the point, far more than the music itself. It's less a song and more a backing track to whatever Steve Sylvester will be doing on stage at the time. Heretics continues that and, like Suspiria, it sounds great but doesn't stay with me past the end of the album, unlike The Rebel God and The Temple of the Rain, which carry on playing in my head.

The World is Doomed hearkens back to those two, but with a little less effect. It's a lesser version but still a step up at this point of the album. And then we return to the most obvious Alice Cooper number on offer, which is Lucifer. It doesn't take any stretch of the imagination to picture the godfather of the genre covering it and making it his own. And so this ends decently enough but in a way that I struggle to see as anything but a doomed attempt to bring the album back to its early levels. The first half is a 7/10 for sure but the second half is more like a 5/10, so I'll split the difference and give this a 6/10.

Tanzwut - Die Tanzwut kehrt zurück (2021)

Country: Germany
Style: NDH/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 May 2021
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

The more I explore the joyous genre of folk metal, the more I learn how some countries take it in very different directions. Case in point: the Germans, who mix it with entirely home grown genres such as the medieval folk of Corvus Corax, the medieval metal of In Extremo and the NDH of Rammstein and Oomph!, which often leads it into industrial territory too. Tanzwut grew out of Corvus Corax, initially being a sort of side project from members of that band, but they're a heavier band most of the time.

They're certainly a heavier band on the title track which opens up the album, as they probably should be, given that Tanzwut means "dance rage" and so this one is The Dance Rage Returns. It's varied, the quiet moments featuring what sounds like a harpsichord, but mostly it's an up tempo romp that can't fail to get your toes tapping, at the very least, with the back end driving it forward, bagpipes lighting the way and Teufel's vocals ringleading the whole thing. There are seven members in Tanzwut at the moment and five of them contribute pipes at points. Two only play pipes and shawm.

Feine Menschen does an even more overt job of shifting between quiet moments and emphatic ones. This one goes electronic, pleasant keyboards noodling behind Teufel's rough but clean voice, but then it launches into high gear, everyone joins back in and we're back to heavy again. I like how they shift in intensity, but that's not their only mode.

I don't speak German, but Bis zum Meer, which Google Translate tells me means To the Sea, feels like a timeless singalong classic. It doesn't play with intensity much, but it feels right and I'm sure this is one that will seriously invoke audience participation when gigs open back up. Pack doubles down on what this brand of folk metal does, courtesy of fellow Germans Saltatio Mortis, who have their own brand of medieval metal. It starts out like it's going to be a western film soundtrack, though the bagpipes soon put paid to that idea and our toes get hyperactive once more.

That's four songs out of four that change up the sound at least a little and the fifth is different again. It's Die Geister die wir riefen, or The Spirits We Called, which is unusual in many respects. It's not rock at all, let alone metal. It's a folk song that delves into gypsy punk and cabaret, strongly featuring an accordion. It's another lively toe tapper but it's a complete departure, even though Teufel's voice has all the grounding the song needs to be identifable as Tanzwut. That's a heck of a range.

And, with that said, I don't need to run through everything else on the album. There are crunchy NDH numbers and quieter folky pieces. There are songs entirely driven by bagpipes and others that play in a more keyboard-driven vein. There's a lot here and, if anything here piques your interest, you should check it out. You'll find yourself diving into a rabbit hole that also contains their eleven albums, going back to 1999, and a whole slew of other bands too.

What I will highlight is Virus, which is the album's closer a dozen tracks in, because Tanzwut surely left the best for last. In some ways, it's the album in microcosm, because it crushes at the outset but then gets sassy, with some winking talk singing from Teufel. It's choral and it's orchestral. It gets retro with sections I'm used to in steampunk, where the song sounds like it's being played through a Victrola. It's heavy and tame and quirky and pretty much everything else. It's a grand way to wrap things up.

Die Krupps - Songs from the Dark Side of Heaven (2021)

Country: Germany
Style: Industrial Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 28 May 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Official Website | Tumblr | Twitter | Wikipedia | YouTube

Here's another covers album, a trend that took off during COVID and will probably keep going for the foreseeable future. This is another unusual one, though, taking perhaps the opposite approach to the A. A. Williams album I reviewed last week. She took alternative rock songs and stripped them down to a vocal/piano approach, while Die Krupps here take indie pop songs and jazz them up with guitar and heavy keyboards to what could be called techno industrial.

Now, I hadn't read the track titles before diving in so I made notes about potential nods in the opener, The Number One Song in Heaven, to Enter Sandman and Walk on the Wild Side. I didn't know this song and I didn't know the one after it either, so it was the third song that got me. Hang on, I thought, isn't this Devo? Yes indeed, it's Whip It, their most famous song. And that's followed by as iconic a track as (Don't Fear) The Reaper, so I read up and discovered that it's entirely a covers album.

Now, (Don't Fear) The Reaper is melodic/hard rock but nothing else here fits that bill. There are a few other songs that tend to be played by rock radio stations, but Another One Bites the Dust wasn't ever really a rock song to begin with, even if Queen were often a rock band, and No More Heroes, originally by the Stranglers, is more obscure nowadays, even though it's still a classic. I'm not going to hear that on my local classic rock station. (Don't Fear) The Reaper is fascinating in this version, recognisable to everyone but utterly different. There's no cowbell, for a start and the famous guitar riff is turned into synths, though there is a guitar solo over the top of it.

Everything else is what I'd call pop music, albeit indie pop music rather than mainstream pop music, a note that trumps however well some of these songs did in the charts back in the day. Most of them are British and they're sourced from a very brief preiod in time. (Don't Fear) The Reaper is the earliest of these songs, dating back to 1976, and the most latest is MCL's New York, originally from 1987, but over half the songs here were released in the three year period from 1979 to 1981.

They include bands I've heard but don't know too well, like Devo, Gang of Four and Sparks, whose song opened the album, meaning that no, there's no Enter Sandman nod even if the Walk on the Wild Side one is real. I knew the Queen, of course, and I may have heard B-Movie's Marilyn Dreams, but I don't think I've even heard of the Neon Judgement, who originated the second song here, the gothy Chinese Black. I'll have to check it out, because I quite like this version. I need to know if the Sisters of Mercy vibe was there all along or if Die Krupps added it, given that the guest musician on this track is Jyrki 69 of Finnish gothic rock band 69 Eyes.

There are other guests here too and some certainly change the dynamics of the song they're guesting on. While most of this album plays in that a techno industrial vein, even (Don't Fear) The Reaper with a guitar solo from James Williamson of the Stooges, To Hell with Poverty, the Gang of Four song, has a very different vibe. The guitars totally dominate this one, thought the guest is Big Paul Ferguson, the drummer of Killing Joke. It's a very punky, anarchic version, an anomaly on this album but, with those drums, not one that seems entirely out of place. The other guest is Ross the Boss, of Manowar fame, who lends an able hand on No More Heroes, which is neatly heavy because of that.

I'm surprised at how much I liked this album and perhaps that's a nostalgia thing. I found rock music in 1984 but I'd been devouring pop music for a few years by then, reading Smash Hits and watching Top of the Pops. My idol at that point was Adam Ant, courtesy of Stand and Deliver and Prince Charming and I still listen to him often today, but I was there as the post punk era prompted the birth of a dozen new genres and I learned a lot. I certainly didn't understand how revolutionary a time it was back then but I the wide variety definitely spoke to me. It apparently spoke to Die Krupps too because they mine it well here.

Now, this isn't remotely the rabbit hole that the recent Monster Magnet covers album was, but I still plan on tracking down the songs that Die Krupps cover on this album. I'm especially intrigued by that Neon Judgement song but also the MCL, the Fad Gadget and the Gang of Four. I like discovery.

Pig Destroyer - The Octagonal Stairway (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Grindcore
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 28 Aug 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | Wikipedia

Variety is the spice of life, I say, not that you hadn't figured out by looking at what I review here. I've listened to a lot of quieter music lately, relatively speaking, prog rock and post-rock and the elegant end of symphonic metal. I felt like a shift into high gear, even further than yesterday's Virus album gave me. So here's Pig Destroyer.

I like grindcore and not only because I was there early-ish trying to fathom out what the heck this new extreme genre was in 1988. Let's just say that my gig list that year started with a-ha and Gypsy Queen, progressed through Rick Wakeman to Metallica and ended up with an indoor festival headlined by a Carcass fresh from their first album release. It was Intense Degree who blew me away on that day (well, them and Paradise Lost, still in their demo days) and I started tuning into John Peel as well as Tommy Vance.

That said, I also know that grindcore is a relatively limited genre and so it's a periodic thing for me. I like getting my system cleaned out by a good grindcore album, but then I'll dive back into traditional genres that are more varied. So, my wishlist here was for something intense enough to really clean my clock after midnight. And, well, I don't think this really delivered, at least on that front.

Sure, it's loud and it's fast and it's heavy, but all grindcore is those things. This is slower than I really expected it to be, with the opening trio of songs a lot closer to later Napalm Death than early. Yeah, I hear punky vocals rather than death growls from J. R. Hayes, but I wanted a blur of speed and I didn't get that, except for about a minute of the opening title track.

This is a truck on a hill without brakes, which is heavy and powerful and destructive, but it isn't close to a rocketship. What's more, these three songs, the others being The Cavalry and Cameraman, total a skimpy ten minutes between them. The final track is longer than that on its own and it isn't remotely like this.

That's because the second half of this 25 minute EP isn't grindcore in the slightest. It comes from the experimental end of industrial, full of static and samples, something I might expect on an old album from Nurse with Wound or Current 93. News Channel 6 is an abrasive intro to Head Cage and they're a mere teaser to Sound Walker, the eleven minute epic that closes this EP out with an industrial drone. Igor Cavalera apparently guests on this one and I wouldn't have recognised that in a hundred years. I couldn't even tell you if he's guesting on drums or vocals or synths or what.

I should praise Pig Destroyer for surprising me. This isn't anything I expected from them and, frankly, it sounds like this is really a split EP with someone else. What's really odd is that the first half plays a lot closer to what I was aiming for, but the second half is what will stay with me. Those slow grindcore songs are decent but they didn't blow me away, though Cameraman is growing on me. Sound Walker, while it's not remotely for everyone, is a piece of music that grabbed my attention and refused to let go. That's a good thing.

And, having sought this out for a whirlwind of energy that I didn't find, I now find myself wondering if there's anything else like Sound Walker in Pig Destroyer's back catalogue. This isn't remotely what I remember from them early on, but they've kept busy since their formation in 1997 and I see an album a couple of years ago named Head Cage, even though there isn't a song of that title on it (though there is here). Maybe that tells me something. Maybe not. I should find out.

Stabbing Westward - Dead & Gone (2020)

Country: USA
Style: Industrial Rock
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 3 Jan 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | Wikipedia

2019's trend of bands crawling out of the woodwork with their first release in forever is apparently set to continue. Stabbing Westward were darlings in the nineties, landing heavy rotation with their Wither Blister Burn & Peel album in 1995; touring with the likes of Killing Joke, the Cult and Depeche Mode; and making the soundtracks of movies like Mortal Kombat, The Faculty and Johnny Mnemonic, as well as a True Blood season finalé. However, their fourth, self-titled, album didn't reach the studio's expected sales and so they split up in 2002. This is their first release in nineteen years.

I was born in 1971 so I'm a child of the eighties rather than the nineties, and the latter is when a lot of the alternative music crossing the Atlantic from the US prompted me to drift away from the scene. I'm much happier with Stabbing Westward and other major nineties bands returning with new vibrant music in the twenties outside the mainstream, meaning that they can do what they do and do it well without it swamping everyone doing something else.

While many fans who saw Stabbing Westward reform in 2016 for their thirtieth anniversary with two of the three founder members on board, surely wanted a full album, they're still happily welcoming this skimpy EP as something more than nothing. It includes three new tracks and two remixes, so it's a tease as much as a release. However, the three new tracks are pretty good, mixing the dance beats and industrial crunch they're known for with good hooks and the usual angsty lyrics. "I failed to realize I'd found everything in you," is just the first line of the first song.

Whatever you think of industrial pop music, the tempo escalation from verse to chorus in Dead and Gone is a statement of intent. The band are back and they're feeling it. This is urgent stuff and, dare I say it, deserves a pit to erupt at gigs because it's that sort of moment. This song reminds more of Depeche Mode than Rammstein, but it's a lot heavier than the former and has a chorus more comparable to the latter.

Cold continues the angst with a song about unrequited passion that kicks off with a surprising eastern flavour. That works really well and ably compares the emotional desolation of a failed "I love you" moment with a geographical desolation, all sand and wind and emptiness. It's catchy as all get out too, a worthy candidate for serious airplay, but it doesn't ditch that heaviness for commerciality.

Crawl is where the band turn the heaviness down a notch. It's a slower song that uses the power more for emotional weight than urgency. In its place is a clockwork riff that nods to the surprising niches they're finding of late. I see that they were a big hit at Dark Side of the Con and rolled over into the organiser's other event, Steampunk Con in New Jersey, alongside Victor Sierra, Rasputina and others. We live in interesting times.

I'm a lot less fond of the remixes, one of Dead and Gone and one of Cold, feeling that the glitchy manipulation only serves to remove most of the urgency from the original songs. So the Cold remix has a more overt dance beat? Shrug.

I'd give the three original songs a 7/10, because they all find that magic balance point between power and commerciality. Stabbing Westward are really back, not just throwing something new out for the cash. This feels like the band is a priority again and they have something to say. Frankly, that's a higher rating than I expected to give, but I'm happy to be surprised with a good set of songs. That said, those three songs only rack up a dozen minutes and I'd be feeling generous if I gave the remixes a 5/10, so let's split the difference and give the EP as a whole a 6/10.