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Rating: I can't honestly say they are a great band in an absolute sense, once you've listened to one of their albums, you've listened to them all, more or less. It's not always easy to maintain high levels of freshness and inspiration when you are part of a musical subgenre with very clear and codified boundaries. But their formula works beautifully, especially in this debut album. I'm talking about Rotersand, a German trio offering solutions that I particularly enjoy, namely electronic music that also performs well outside of the dancefloor context; their specific futurepop, an EBM enriched with techno and new wave influences with a dash of electroclash, is particularly enjoyable to me. A powerful, direct, and intensely charged style without pseudo alternative, trendy, or hipster nuances, with plenty of adrenaline, a touch of healthy brashness, but also darker and reflective moments. To make a slightly dramatic comparison and to brutally oversimplify, one could say that Rotersand vaguely resemble Depeche Mode with quite a bit of spice and a significantly less showy and self-centered singer, thankfully.
"Truth Is Fanatic," the debut from 2003, is the synthesis of their style and an album truly well-made, muscular and fiery as I like it, slightly acidic at times but never excessively heavy or redundant, perfect for those who love strong and decisive flavors; bombardments of synths, lascivious voice, a wonderful atmosphere of decadent solemnity, industrial beats, and jarring orchestrations intertwining in an exhilarating sound tapestry. The sumptuous "Merging Oceans" with its seven and a half minutes of elevation and spatial trip atmospheres with a surprise tempo change is its stylistic apex, the hedonistic and paranoid acidity of "Electronic World Transmission" and the sick mantra of "Social Distortion" pulse in your head which is a pleasure, and when faced with the basic stimuli of a sizzling "The Fire" or the steroid-treated synth pop of "Content Killer" one can only surrender, hands up and let go. About halfway through the album comes "One Level Down", an unexpected semi-acoustic ballad with intimate tones, a type of song that, with a much more banal arrangement and perhaps sung by a raspy-voiced Eddie Vedder lookalike, could be a decent hit for any post-grunge band aimed at hyped-up teenage girls tired of the usual boy bands but the effect is nonetheless very pleasant, a demonstration of how it's sometimes the underlying "spirit" that makes a song beautiful rather than its intrinsic value.
"One Level Down" marks a turning point in the flow of the work, from here on the rhythms become less frenetic, and after the great display of style and strength of "Merging Oceans", the atmospheres thin out with "Lifelight" and "Move On", mid-tempos characterized by dark atmospheres and introspective lyrics; and after the amplified Moroderian groove touches and go of a mercurial "Sonic Agony", it closes with "Hush", a brief and languid farewell that sounds almost comforting, "it was just a bad dream, now it's all over", seems to be the message of this soothing outro, a bit ironic after hitting the listener with such heavy artillery. This collection of vaguely dystopian-sounding tunes, with a particular emphasis on the weaknesses of the human psyche, has many distinguished inspirations and putative fathers: Prodigy, KMFDM, early Oomph!, Gary Numan, some reminiscences of the Christian "Flake" Lorenz period 1995-1997, the more extravagant Information Society, Giorgio Moroder's visionary grooves rather than Patrick Cowley; overall, the only album by Rotersand truly successful and effective in its entirety, a quality product and an album always effective, intense, and "on point", enough for a well-deserved, widely positive judgment.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Almost Violent (06:21)
your beauty strikes like a punch out of nowhere
your passion bites and i'm willing to get there
I heed your eyes, your words leave me silent
I'm paralyzed, your look's almost violent
take your place behind the wheel
you're in command, take me where you want to
i'm a passenger waiting for departure
read behind my face of steel
don't get deceived, I'm human and I want you
i'm a passenger waiting for departure
03 Content Killer (04:47)
can't you see wherever we go
another witch, another hero
with promises so bold and hollow,
we dare not doubt, just blindly follow
endowed with target-group precision
they're taking over our decisions
Killer creeping right into our marrow
setting up a reign of terror
good and bad have joined their forces
spreading lies in trojan horses
skillfully disguised in laughter
to leave us wasted ever after
how can you tell what theirs and yours is
we had so many brainwash-courses
whom can you trust, where can you turn to
when you've become the flame that burns you
love me - I don't
believe me - I won't
04 Electronic World Transmission (04:06)
get me get me a little closer
let me see the phantom view
take me right into the center
of the 911-news
get me get me my voyeur fetish
keep me shackled all day through
electronic world transmission
everything I see is true
give me give me observation
let me have the on-site feel
give me give me the true sensation
for I need a touch of real
show me show me what is happening
in the world beyond my door
and in time i'll be forgetting
what i have been living for
help me help me i'm too frightened
to fulfill my hardest task
will i ever find the answers
to the things i dare not ask
08 Merging Oceans (07:36)
no wind can blow my faith away,
no fear to drown, i'm merging oceans
at mercy of the raging storm
I'm holding on to merging oceans
horizon lost to creeping dark
no turning back, i'm merging oceans
i reach my goal where i began
within the flow of merging oceans
merging oceans, no turning back,
no fear to drown, merging oceans
09 Lifelight (04:30)
come to my voices
reach for my hand
too many choices
don’t know where to land
no time for a breakdown
no time for remorse
turn on your lifelight
lead me out of the storm
there are times when seas are too deep
I feel I'm lost - no wind will bring my name to you
there are times I'm raging with fear
a spell that keeps me floundering in the nameless blue
11 Sonic Agony (05:09)
I see them working, sweating, raving on the floor
they’re pushing to the limits - still they cry for more
and as their bodies twitch in sonic agony,
my mind is setting out to soothing reverie
I dream a dream so quiet, soft and plain
a story leading to an infinite refrain
and though I like the air of roaring ecstasy,
every now and then it's just too much for me
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