Combichrist
The Joy of Gunz

THE REVIEW

Licking wounds with gusto. Experiencing the pleasure of moods. Enchantingly flogging a back. Subjugating a human being to the whip. Taking a blood bath followed by a crowd bath. Overseeing humanity gone mad under strobe lights.

These things have never crossed my mind, but with the aggressive techno / terror EBM music of Combichrist (the idea of Andy La Plegua, the voice of the softer Icon Of Coil, future pop at times similar to that of Apoptygma Berzerk), I have had the overall vision of an aesthetic difficult to digest made of fluid fluorescence, androgyny, and misanthropy—costumes devoid of any moral hold that become normality. For a hyper-violent danse macabre in a cave refuge for the adepts of contemporary gothic/industrial electronics. I've never harbored a particular passion for EBM, but I've followed the scene's developments thanks to bands like Das Ich, which made me understand that there is "tunz" and there is "tanz". The new millennium's most successful techno-industrial abominable degeneration (de gustibus) is represented by this uncontrollable shard, the executioner and sadomasochistic proposal of Combichrist's debut named The Joy Of Gunz (2003).

This lustful humiliation of morality, this unmasking of hypocrisies, is joined by nihilistic sounds from continuous and sometimes hyperbolic strikes from an endless chain to the coldest synthetic noise. Alongside the brutality of soulless machines comes a clouded, proud, sadistic voice, filtered through technological gear. The complexity of the tracks on this album, club dancefloor music limited to a few, seems to be a monument to human idiocy, gratuitous malice, the taste of something even more underground than the horrific and the macabre. In two words, bad taste. But this obsession with psychophysical violence, which leaves no room to breathe except in the opening with Intruder Alert, a gem and one of the most listenable tracks of the entire release, has the merit of not being governed by a brainless troll. At the helm of this supersonic army is a man who, as mentioned, has significant experience in the art of dance for the children of the flowers of evil and does not want to make this side-project a mere outlet for his desire to go heavy. If the entire album sounds wicked and ruthless but controlled at the melodic level, it is thanks to La Plegua, once again the author of regular cyber programming. Andy has modulated the noise patterns and hammering on a precise artistic concept: humanity deserves a good beating, but not blindly; cruel and well-distributed blows to make them live the nightmare of endured violence without the possibility of defense with open eyes.

And so, after an opening that feels like a prelude to flogging, a series of tracks begin that are sometimes ambient and sometimes martial and unscrupulous, fundamentally resulting in two types of effects: repulsion for those unaccustomed to this genre of music, obsessive dance without batting an eye for those who make this massacre a lifestyle.

The track titles are precise and sharp: "You Will Be The Bitch Now," "Bulletfuck, Human Error." The lobotomy attempt is sometimes really successful. So is the attempt to impress.

Highly not recommended for those who love handmade music. Recommended for those who appreciated VNV Nation. Perhaps, even surpassed.