Boyd Rice and Friends
Wolf Pact

I typed "artist" under Boyd Rice and "Friends" only because the databaser does not recognize the correct designation, which should instead be Boyd Rice and "Fiends": not a typographical error, but a play on words ("friends", "fiends") with which Rice decides to rename his personal project, arriving at its second studio appointment (if you don't count the lead single "The Registered Three", recorded in the same year).

The illustrious predecessor was "Music, Martinis and Misanthropy", released in 1990 and featuring contributions from well-known figures of the apocalyptic scene such as Douglas P. (Death in June), Tony Wakeford (Sol Invictus), Rose McDowall (Current 93), Michael Moynihan, and Bob Ferbrache (both from Blood Axis): an intense, surreal work destined to become a cornerstone of apocalyptic folk.

More than ten years later, in 2002 to be exact, history repeats itself: Boyd Rice, Douglas P., and Albin Julius forge the Wolf Pact. Seeing the friends that Boyd Rice has brought along, and considering Boyd Rice himself, one might think of a work with a high fascist rate.

And yet "Wolf Pact" is a cheerful and breezy album (a spat between friends, one could say) that through excesses and irony, delivers what we can expect from the characters involved, but without that underlying seriousness that always spoils everything.

I don't know why, but with Boyd Rice and Douglas P. I feel at home: listening to their album, regardless of what's inside and what's behind, is as dear to me as a night spent with old friends from long ago, who might be jerks, but to whom one cannot deny a deep and sincere affection.

And how dear it is to hold in my hands this "Wolf Pact" with a more than idiotic cover, depicting the three boiled ones in truculent and gloomy poses: Boyd Rice, dressed in black in canvas espadrilles and without socks, sitting on a stone mushroom; Pearce in camouflage hugging a giant mushroom; Julius, with a black shirt and Hitler-like hairstyle, looking at us playfully. All around: garden gnomes and what might seem like a children's playground... but fenced with barbed wire! (Inside the booklet, we'll find the three glaring at us again, this time amidst the fresh leaves and overshadowed by two little gnomes who seem to be giving a Roman salute!)

Whether it's self-irony, insane idiocy, or more simply involuntary trash doesn't change much: Boyd Rice and Douglas P. remain perfectly controversial, respectable, and despicable characters at the same time; characters who have chosen to walk a difficult road, filled with obstacles, dotted with decidedly uncomfortable and completely debatable ideas and positions. Authentic icons of a way of conceiving and making music, who after years of (dis)honorable career finally reach the status of those who can afford everything.

To them the credit, despite fleets of soulless disciples, crazy clones, and hysterical fans ready to die for them, for being the first not to take themselves too seriously, not to indulge in fake or predictable poses: ridiculous yes, charlatans too, but always and still themselves. Men before artists.

 "Wolf Pact" continues in the wake of its predecessor but with substantial differences: whereas "Music, Martinis and Misanthropy" mainly emphasized atmosphere and the lyrical component (so much that the music appeared to us as a soothing accompaniment to Rice's reflections), this work's focus shifts decisively to sounds and physical impact.

The folk component is drastically reduced, while there is much more space for the harshness we can expect from sound terrorists like Rice and Julius: martial suggestions, precisely because of the presence of Julius (brain of the warmongers Der Blutharsch), gain ground, although the overall industrial/noise of Our Men leans towards the dark shores of a psychedelia with exquisitely esoteric flavors.

A varied album, therefore, less compact than its predecessor, which ends up sounding dispersed and not well cared for in sounds and arrangements (definitely a notch below the legendary "Music, Martinis and Misanthropy").

In 2001, after all, the not particularly inspiring "All Pigs Must Die" was released, and "Wolf Pact" ends up being the collateral result of a period of creative stagnation that Death in June was experiencing at the time. It is true that Pearce's compositional slackness will not overly affect the final result, given that the only moments where his presence is tangible are the opener "Watery Leviathan" (a dreamy lullaby, complete with jingling and angelic choirs) and the title track (another gentle folk piece harking back to the period "But, What Ends When the Symbols Shatter?").

For the rest, he will limit himself to strumming his little guitar from time to time, singing unnecessary counterpoints, and indulging in the usual effects. It is rather the machines of Rice and Julius that speak, creating apocalyptic scenarios and stretches of ruins serving as the ideal backdrop for Rice's evocative monologue.

In his prophetic verses, Rice alludes to Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, God, the Devil, and even Douglas P. (!!!), but without ever going overboard: all the Boyd Rice thinking, in reality, appears to us through cryptic formulas and images with strong symbolic connotations that draw inspiration from history, ancient myths, and religions.

In the duo "The Forgotten Father" and "Tomb of the Forgotten Father", for example, Rice tells of a strange dream where, finding himself in an unknown land, at the foot of an ancient temple whose architecture does not seem traceable to any known civilization, he meets Douglas P. (intent on sipping a glass of white wine), with whom he has an enlightening dialogue (hilarious is the scene where Rice, bewildered, suddenly recognizes the friend and asks him what the hell he's doing in such a place!).

But "Wolf Pact", with a few exceptions, will not reveal itself as an album of talks, but rather as a dreamlike journey where slogans, formulas, or true instrumental tour de forces prevail, like the enveloping noise crescendo of "The Orchid and the Death's Head" (almost eight minutes of swirling drones with devastating effects both for the ears and the psyche).

The whole album, really, seems aimed at stunning the listener. Noises, recorded voices, overlapping voices, reverse-played voices, the splattering organ of "Their Bad Blood" sweeping away the slow martial movements of "Worlds Collide": "Wolf Pact" is a continuous alternation between Julius's war conspiracies (his hand is evident behind the pompous "Rex Mundi" or the shootings that dot "Murder Bag") and Rice's sound assaults ("The Reign Song" and "Joe Liked to Go (to the Cemetery)" seem to come directly from a NoN album).

And then there's "Fire Shall Come", perhaps the best thing ever to come out of Boyd Rice's one-neuron brain: nothing special, mind you, just percussion, drones, and Rice's muffled ranting. A piece that live kicks respectively ass and ears (I say this from experience!), but that even within the four walls of home, at a volume between high and very high, manages to give us a run for our money, for us as well as our neighbors!

  "Wolf Pact", as you'd have guessed, is not a masterpiece, and, to be honest, not even a good work: an album listenable, even appreciable, at times, or even exciting, in others, but on the whole recommendable only to those who know and appreciate the scene and characters.

So come forward whoever knows how to settle, or even whoever, more simply, finds themselves having an insane desire for three-quarters of an hour of dissonant and rather crappy music.

Like me.

 Fire! Fire! Everlasting Fire!