"The World That Summer", released in 1986, continues the dialogue begun with the previous album "Nada!" The ideas and insights that had constituted a first liberation from the early dark tones in that album appear here more focused and organized, and the work certainly marks an important step forward in the process of defining and building apocalyptic folk, a journey that will find its definitive completion in the next "Brown Book".

Patrick Leagas is no longer part of Death in June, along with all those wave remnants that were still present in the monumental previous tome. In place of Leagas, we find a distinguished substitute, a certain Christ 777, none other than David Tibet, who had already collaborated with the band in the past, participating in the creation of timeless classics like "Leper Lord", "She Said Destroy", and "Behind The Rose (Fields of Rape)". It is precisely under the influence of the esoteric dark tones of Current 93 that this dark and fascinating chapter of Death in June seems to emerge, more than ever filled with the intimate tones and piercing, enigmatic introspections of Douglas Pearce, now alone at the helm of the project, and thus in a position to express and fulfill his existential obsessions and ruminations in complete freedom.

As happened in "Nada!", restless industrial phrasings alternate with the sparse ballads that will ensure the success of our protagonist. And although from a songwriting perspective, the individual compositions are a step below their distinguished predecessor, it must be said that the overall effect isn't bad at all: "The World That Summer", certainly less inspired than "Nada!", manages to gain in conceptual coherence and atmosphere. Some more "canonically" dark remnants remain, and I'm talking about the haunting "Torture by Roses" and "Come before Christ and Murder Love", which reintroduce sounds comparable to the melancholy gloom of The Cure in "Faith". But overall, Pearce's artistic soliloquy is already clearly oriented towards the unsettling shores of a desolate and tragic music filled with pathos and passion, but devoid of hope.

Tibet's haunted voice appears here and there to enrich an album already heavy with an unexploded madness with hallucinatory hysteria. With Leagas's departure, the martial vigor of the percussion is tempered, but the warlike tension is not diminished: the dark Central European atmospheres, ethnic accents, and vaguely Middle-Eastern influences paint a grim and desolate world where there is no longer room for the iconoclastic and declamatory fury of the past, only the desolation left behind by destruction, loss, and defeat. Often accused of pro-war inclinations, Douglas P. actually undertakes a much more delicate and complex operation: his is a process of re-reading, appropriation, and introjection in which the ruins and shattered bodies of war represent the "psychic ruins" and the irremediable lacerations of his disintegrating self, on the brink of falling apart. The spare sounds, sharp drum-machine strikes, and minimal keyboard counterpoints illustrate the existential abyss, the sense of emptiness, the artist's loneliness, still far from the disenchanted detachment and bitter irony that will characterize his mature artistic phase. Meanwhile, the icy percussion beats, organ openings, and the insane noise backdrop inject glimpses of black esotericism into Death in June's music, marking the beginning of a process of osmosis between the two artists, Douglas and Tibet, that will lead Death in June towards an increasingly metaphysical and rarefied dimension, while Current 93 will draw closer to more distinctly folk sounds. The martial "Rule Again" and "Blood Victory" are moments of sick industrial ritualism, while "Blood of Winter", "Hidden among the Leaves", "Love Murder", "Rocking Horse Night" are disjointed sketches, lullabies that smell of tar, hallucinations that are both terrible and surreal, dreamlike representations of a discomfort not yet conceptualized but keenly perceived. The reverberating click of a weapon being loaded, the distant singing of a woman, the out-of-tune sound of a music box: it seems as if it's the unconscious rather than the rational sphere doing the speaking, and only in a few moments, such as the laconic "Break the Black Ice", are the clarity and conscious detachment glimpsed that will characterize the future Death in June.

The peak of the work is undoubtedly the exhaustive quarter-hour of "Death of a Man", the first devastating exploration into the territories of the most annihilating and claustrophobic noise: a masterfully directed chaos escalation, in which solemn gong strikes are joined and overlaid with percussion, voices (among them recorded voices of Mishima and Jenet, key authors for understanding Pearce's thinking), distant orchestrations and the confused sounds of an enraged crowd, in which Pearce's own subdued voice is the futile whisper of a sad preacher who knows he cannot be heard. The composition is also the pinnacle of Douglas's abstractionism, if not of the entire industrial music genre: a dark ritual in which the slow beats of percussion mark the relentless passage of centuries, and the chaotic and irritating chatter of men mixes with the beastly brawling of enraged monkeys. The track seems to trace the entire history of Humanity, presenting a cynical depiction of prevailing futility, human stupidity, and the end of all beauty. It is the peak of Pearce's pessimism and misanthropy, and like Mishima, who ended his existence in the face of the decline of values in Japanese society under the blows of rampant capitalism (it was 1970, and the intellectual publicly committed suicide through the samurai ritual hari-kari), the English artist, not less coherently, continues relentlessly his crusade of unperturbed determination against the adverse blows of a ruthless world that would shape us into an amorphous syrup according to its intents.

"The World That Summer" is certainly not a masterpiece, and it's not always able to hit the mark. However, this album is perfectly capable of highlighting the expressive potential of Death in June's music. Precisely at this juncture, not coincidentally, Douglas P. dons a mask for the first time, and, in parallel, his music becomes effectively the means to express and at the same time conceal the irremediable lacerations of his tormented soul.

Allow me at this point a personal reflection: while there's often a tendency to see a character like Pearce as a somewhat mediocre artist who has built a career on two or three scenic tricks, on the contrary, I am ready to uphold his intrinsic greatness. And I ask you (and objections are most welcome), if you can think of, in the recent history of music, an artist who, like Pearce, has managed to perform an equal work of abstraction from his emotional substratum, an equal operation of metaphorical transfiguration of his experiences into a conceptual and symbolic apparatus so impenetrable and inaccessible, yet full of meanings and capable of penetrating deep into our consciences. I can't think of anything.

Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos

01   Blood of Winter (04:09)

02   Hidden Among the Leaves (04:29)

03   Torture By Roses (03:33)

04   Come Before Christ And Murder Love (04:24)

05   Love Murder (05:09)

06   Rule Again (04:01)

07   Break the Black Ice (04:06)

08   Rocking Horse Night (03:31)

Hold me as I slip away
Into this coldness
Hold me as I slip away
Into these colours
Hold me as I pay respect
To broken spires
Of dreadful night

My flesh has been torn
My eyes have seen clouds
My nails have gripped the clay
Of crawling black flowers
Recalling dead sorrow
Recalling black love

You and I
in pleasure parted
You and I
In sadness racked
You and I
In flowers falling
You and I
Invoke culling
You and I
In soulless searching
You and I
In heartfelt hurting
You and I
At our first bleeding
You and I, You and I . . .

This little childs death
This bundle of cloth
With prayer book precision
On rocking horse night
Casting the runes
Odal, hail and thorn

Hold me as I slip away
Into this coldness
Hold me as I slip away
Into these colours
Hold me as I pay respect
To dreadful spires
Of tired life.

09   Blood Victory (05:17)

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Other reviews

By Rocky Marciano

 It was November 25, 1970, and that man was the Japanese Yukio Mishima... Mishima’s death, entrusted to the ancient samurai ritual suicide "seppuku," put an end to the existence of this descendant of an ancient samurai family.

 "The World That Summer" is an extraordinary and crepuscular warrior’s song.


By caesar666

 "The roses depicted on the cover are a powerful symbol permeating these grooves, steeped in decadence: the rose in fact is seen in its dual meaning of love and death."

 "'Come Before Christ and Murder Love' is perhaps the absolute pinnacle of the album and one of the best songs ever composed by Douglas P."