Death In June
Kapo!

The work that stems from the operation Death in June presents: Kapo! should not be considered an official chapter in the discography of Death in June: born from the collaboration between Douglas Pearce and multi-instrumentalist Richard Leviathan, "Kapo!" is an interlocutory episode, an atypical parenthesis within the artistic path of Death in June.

Interposing itself between the happy folk season of the nineties and the abrupt post-industrial turn of the works with Albin Julius, "Kapo!" constitutes a sort of themed musical essay in which thoughts and reflections are gathered and developed regarding the delicate situation that the Balkan area was experiencing in the last decade.

"Kapo!" speaks to us of a Europe fragmented in its identity, torn by intense brutal struggles, and impregnated with blood and despair. In the dark and bitter tones that permeate it, there is much of Pearce's condition as an exile, secluded in his Australian ghetto, a cynical yet passionate observer of the upheavals shaking Europe in those years.

It's 1996. The previous year "Rose Clouds of Holocaust" had been released: understandably, "Kapo!" pays homage to some of the sounds contained within it, but for comparative purposes, it is more appropriate to bring up a work like "Heaven Sent," released the same year under the moniker Scorpion Wind (a project by Pearce with Boyd Rice, joined by Leviathan himself).

It is still about apocalyptic folk, but in a different sense from what Pearce had accustomed us to until then. The atmospheres actually refer to an arcane and surreal folk, where the verses spread over the rhythm of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem: thus, the song form is abandoned, and the interweaving of acoustic guitar and strings (which constitute the main sound body of the album) end up serving as sparse backgrounds against which Pearce's dark narration stands out, at times just a whisper, never so minimal as in this instance.

The eight tracks flow without particular jolts; it is understood that the musical dimension is relegated to the role of a simple stage for the dark visions emerging from the impenetrable lyrics of Pearce and Leviathan.

In this desolate fresco, "Only Europa Knows" undoubtedly stands out, in my opinion, one of the most fascinating ballads produced by Death in June: never before had Pearce sounded so cold and authoritative, never before had such minimal guitar lines, never before such a terrifying keyboard phrase. And in the distance: voices, sirens, a blurred industrial chaos that serves merely as a backdrop to the majestic movements of an aerial, hypnotic, insubstantial ballad. A masterpiece that alone justifies the purchase of the album.

Everything else is boredom, probably intentional, given that the entire sound architecture is strictly functional to the conceptual apparatus of the album. Nevertheless, an album born from a real communicative urgency and which after years still retains its own charm.

The sad dances of viola and violin, the lullabies lost in the distance and fog of a distraught Europe, the bells and voices overlapping in a dreamlike dimension where nightmare and reality blur: all this contributes to building a hallucinated ritual that carries with it the dramatic tones of a universal tragedy.

Themes of betrayal, confinement, uprooting; the eternal struggle between brothers, the violence and ruthlessness that reign supreme along man's journey on this earth: what makes the difference is Pearce's "lucid madness," a visionary scientist, isolated in his perverse laboratory, grappling with tragic alchemies of blood and tears.

To speak of an unsuccessful album, or worse, of a slump in inspiration is therefore out of place: despite the prevailing prolixity, the tension and desolation that permeate the work's entire duration literally take one's breath away.

And while remaining the domain of the band's completist fans, "Kapo!" is a still dignified album, a separate chapter and hardly definable within the artistic journey of Death in June, which with this work puts an end to the creative phase of its most purely folk period.