Bisius

Five

There’s a moment, more precisely when in "In The Family," Snah starts to wail with his solo over Bent’s voice singing "Know it's running in the family / into the setting sun / it's running in the family / waving loaded guns." Well, at that exact moment I wish I could be catapulted back to 1997, to that recording studio, so I could finally weep like a little calf in front of them.

It sends chills down your spine. Grotesque and paradoxical to unprecedented levels. A dizzying political, social, and moral reflection, daring and profound. Making a film like this today would be unthinkable.

It really knocks you out! When the girl sings, it brings to mind Group Doueh, elsewhere the Eastern fuzz is a direct call to the raga of the early seventies, there are remnants of noir-funk from soundtracks, and more often than not, I find myself tapping my foot like in the glorious Amanaz tracks. Everything is beautifully blended, and the songs are truly stunning. Ass and brain, right on! I give a thumbs up to "Golden Dawn," "Let It Bleed," and "Run To Your Mama" with that semi-kraut riff on a single note in perpetual oscillation, it drives you crazy! Hi Psycho, I returned the visit. :)

What a silly and predictable response. As if Cronenberg were just those films you mentioned (and only those), and as if those films you cited were... what? What kind of demonstration? prettier? less pretty? bloodier? more political? more powerful? better made? better actors? What? Thematically, the entirety of Cronenberg's work (with the sole exception of The Dead Zone, which is his least successful film IMHO) is perfectly coherent with itself, centered on the theme of mutation and change, seen from hundreds of different aspects and perspectives: physical, psychic, political, technological, social, hybridity and futurism, unreality and the dark side. The physical and material Cronenberg has transformed over the years into a more cerebral and psychological Cronenberg, it's been years. It has been since 1999 that you haven’t seen blood flowing in one of his films, and even then, there had been Crash, there had been M. Butterfly, there had been Naked Lunch, not to mention his very first steps, like Stereo or Crimes of the Future. This film is so abstract and anti-commercial that if it hadn't been labeled "Cronenberg + Pattinson + Giamatti," there’s no way it would have been distributed in theaters. "Abysmal, glossy, and insubstantial nonsense" is your very personal and highly debatable judgment, not even justified: glossy because? Who or what is glossy? Is DeLillo's book glossy? And if not, considering this is an almost verbatim adaptation of the book, it follows that perhaps the book is not glossy and the film is? Insubstantial? Are we kidding? Are you another one who watched it with "tired and half-asleep neurons" or are you consciously ignoring the quadrillions of interpretations that can be drawn from these 110’? Please...

Anyone going to see a Cronenberg film with preconceived notions like <<lots of twisted, absurd, and indecipherable dialogues if you show up at the cinema with tired and half-asleep neurons>> deserves - without malice - 1. It's like watching Tarantino and saying <<I don't like self-referentiality>>: you might as well pass the ball.

Just as in music there was a before-ITCOTCK and an after-ITCOTCK, twelve years later there will also be a pre-Discipline and a post-Discipline. This is, literally, one of those albums that splits an era in half. As a melodic amalgam, I prefer Three Of A Perfect Pair, but discussing Discipline is like discussing a dogma: it cannot be done. You can only rate it less than 5 in case of personal tastes and observations. To criticize it formally and in terms of content is madness.

They release a better album year after year. The great thing is that their room for improvement seems far from coming to a halt. I really like Panoptica because it's the (unexpected) punch that hits you inside. Only Stay Out, What A Sight surpasses it in beauty. We all love Virginia.

I understand Geb's bitterness, but I believe that Motorpsycho anticipated all these types of reactions since "Black Hole / Black Canvas." I don't know, I still see much more coherence than what appears, a remarkable fil de rouge that perfectly connects every stage of their career (hardcore->90s rock->hard rock->psychedelic pop->70s psychedelia->hard-prog->orchestrati ons). For this reason, I consider this album to be the last chapter of a phase that has already concluded: you'll see that the next work will be radically different. A good part of the second album is a bit weak, true (especially "Sharks"), but tracks like "Through The Veil," "Mutiny!" and especially "Into The Mystic" (when that indie guitar breaks through the prog blend: it’s the ultimate nod to their past!) are still, objectively, priceless. It's pointless to keep expecting the past from a band that has always tried to look forward. If they had continued to write Demon Box in 2012, I believe the reactions would have been the same: irony, insults, and fish in the face. Instead, honor to a band that, despite its human weaknesses, always shows great courage and ability to renew itself, after over forty years. 3.5 for me.

Saying something minimally original and not self-referential in a genre as deaf and ontologically extreme as funeral doom is a desperate endeavor. The authority with which this album piles inventions upon inventions, creating a fascinatingly devastating hybrid, is truly astonishing. "The Divinity Of Oceans" is a precious album, or rather, a priceless one. "Yet Another Raft Of The Medusa (Pollard's Weakness)" and "Nickerson's Theme" are two journeys capable of sinking any type of resistance...