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Rating: Anger consumes. It is a cursed demon that corrodes you inside, digs deep and hurts with its poisoned claws. It feeds on its host like a parasite until it is so large that it completely destroys it. In the current modern civilization, anger surrounds us and is continuously fueled by that bubbling and chattering tumult commonly referred to with the generic term 'people', a shapeless mass with a single mindset whose only goal is to transfer its frustration onto someone for the sole purpose of conforming them to its system of thought, easily definable with the adjective 'idiocy'. The target of this continuous and systematic attack is the madmen, those poor fools who still believe in values like freedom of thought, respect, and the much-maligned live and let live. It's even sadder if these lunatics are also interested in blasphemies like music, literature, art, in short, if they have even the slightest inclination towards culture in general. Rejected, treated as lepers, these individuals endure the pressures of cities that seem to breathe down their necks, never granting a moment of respite, and it's precisely in this humus that anger is fueled and grows, a monster to be kept at bay day by day with medications and prayers to often deaf deities. Then there's Heavy Metal, a release valve, a vehicle through which to channel those screams that break through your ribcage and keeping them inside costs immense and constant effort. Because let's be honest, we might say we like Metal for the technique, for the atmospheres, or for some other reason that doesn't come to mind right now, but the real reason we grind our ears with records like "City" by Strapping Young Lad is one: to have someone else scream in our place! Someone might also tell me to go to hell, but deep down you know that what I say is the truth. In a mix of Death Metal, Thrash Metal, and Industrial like the one proposed by Devin Townsend, there is only anger, mental illness, marginalization, and pain. Those screams get inside you because, in the end, they are yours too, you too are lost in the city that closes in on you and watches you like an Orwellian Big Brother that only wants to see you crawl at its feet, begging. Townsend builds a musical universe that reeks of smog and blinds like sharp steel edged with blood: syncopated rhythms, sometimes fast, sometimes frantic, with drum patterns from an out-of-control Gene Hoglan, a behemoth that overwhelms everything and everyone with a use of the double pedal that is never exaggerated but damn effective and brutal. On this scaffold move Jed Simon (guitar) and Byron Stroud (bass), capable of putting together an impenetrable wall of sound. Try to break through it, you shouting mass of crap, try!!! To all this is added the voice of that damned Devin Townsend, now abrasive like sandpaper, now melodic and lost, which when it leans on the synth base becomes the emblem of despair set to music. The good Canadian doesn’t need scream, growl, pig squeal, inhale, or anything else; he hits hard with the honesty of someone screaming in your face. Try listening closely to the melodic break in "Detox" or the unsettling advance of "Room 429" and then tell me: it's all dark and gloomy, with a few flashes of neon lights that, swinging from side to side like a half-burned-out bulb hanging by a thread, make everything more unsettling than ever.
This is the album of Gibsonian cowboys, those who travel through cyberspaces with iridescent lights in their minds, leaving behind a series of zeros and ones that in binary spell out a loud and gloomy 'fuck you'. Townsend and company travel the rails of madness, going from side to side. The orchestral carpets staged by the Canadian are dark and thick like a black drape, they smell of exhaust fumes and have the vacant gaze of a hallucinated and terrible trip. There is no room for light in "City", it is a work that destabilizes and intimidates, bringing out the listener’s anger and sadness, leaving them at the end stunned and exhausted. A terrible and at the same time fascinating experience because in front of the work of Strapping Young Lad, there are no masks that hold: anger and tears come out in the same way, but the awareness of not being alone calms and dries like the touch on the skin of a soft silk handkerchief.
Many say that Heavy Metal is not music for everyone; well, albums like this only confirm this statement, at least for me. Now, before closing, I wanted to point out that in the version of "City" that Century Media released to celebrate its twenty-five years of activity as a record label, there is, in addition to a live album and various demos, a track excluded from the first print of the 1997 album, a splendid song that has little to envy the other nine. It's called "Centipede", go listen to it.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Velvet Kevorkian (01:17)
I Want To Be Where The Action Is
It's Time Again
We Won't Get A Second Chance
Everything Is Dying
Fuck Sleep, Fuck Beauty, I Know I Have To Make It Alone
It's 2:45 A.M. And I'm Freaking Out
All I Can Think Of Is Glory, And I'm Sitting In Burnaby
At 2:45 In The Fucking Morning
Freaking The Fuck Out
One Month And I'm Gone Forever
Fuck This Once And For All...
And Just Like All Those Bullshit Jobs
I Swore I'd Never Go Back To
I Swear I'll Never Go Back To This Life
Fuck This
Can You Believe This Shit People?
All You Stupid Fucking People
With Your Useless Fucking Lives
And Your Bullshit Priorities
And Your Sick Fucking Wars
And Your Pathetic Religion
And Your Shit Music
And Your Sick Fucking Hate
Bullshit, Sitcom, North American Ignorance
A New Time Is Coming
And We Know You'll Awake In There
Who's Your Daddy?
02 All Hail the New Flesh (05:24)
Hey Man, I'm Going To Fuck This Shit Up
No Fear, No Compromise, I Want It All
I Will Never Be Afraid, And I'll Die For What I Believe
All Of You Assholes Can Stay Rotting Here
I Do No Care, I Will Not Be There
I Have Got To Save Myself
And Don't Tell Me There's No One Else
And All You Are Is All You Are...
I'm So Sorry (For You) I'm Sorry...
So All Hail The New Flesh,
Because It Suits Me Fine...
Just Get Away, You Motherfuck
And We'll Be Back If You Come
For What This Means To Me, You Piece Of Shit...
I'll See You Pigs In Hell
I Just Know Everything's Going To Be O.K.
03 Oh My Fucking God (03:34)
There is no insanity, rather a super sanity
More suited for life at the end of the 20th century
Where everything is art
And everything is trying to express it
Where everything is art
And everything is trying to communicate it...
All intelligent beings sleep the dreaming of dreams
And they've all come up to meet met tonight
Although while in the morning, all their wonder and their
Glory was turned ugly and quite simple
Like a venue when you're loading in gear
Sexuality, eroticism in asexual persuasions
Man or woman, makes no difference in the outcome
No fashion, no tolerance for stupidity or ignorance
..."adidas" or "the arch deluxe"...
And time is now an object
Oh my fucking god...
Oh I'm fucking god...
And I'll dream this into becoming real
And until such time that you can prove me otherwise
I will continue with my agnostic travels
Until I've found a place that dreams with me...
...a place that feeds on my routine
All I want is my mommy...
All I want is my mommy...
All I want is my mommy...
All I want is my mommy...
This is the night that it all changes
04 Detox (05:37)
I've Got A Feeling
With The Wrong People
And I Can't Control My Thoughts
I Wish That I Could Sleep
And Just Get This Over With
...This Is Only High School Bullshit...
I Just Want To Feel
I Was Warned
Absolutley Numb
No Good Around People
Everyone Knows And Watches Me
How Did I Get Here Tonight?
What Am I Doing Here?
How Did I Reach This State?
How Did I Lose My Sight?
I'm Lost ... I'm Freaking
And Everybody Knows ... Everyone's Watching
...So Here's All My Hopes And Aspirations
Nothing But Puke
God, It's So Lonely...
I Just Want To Feel
06 AAA (05:21)
Devy In The Corner Of His Teen Year
Born To Run Away
Children In The Middle With The Village Idiot
So He Never Made The Potty Grade
Now Maybe He Pulled A Little Closer
Cold In A Mousy Way
Boom Boom As They Came A Little Closer
Put A Bolt In The Curse Today
Now Devy Has To Eat It In His Own Way
Broke In A Dirty Way
Boom Boom Is The Beating That I Hear In The Night
But No One Hears, So No One No And No One Fucks With
Me
Devy Wants A Word With The Master
I Got No Need To Run Away
Down On The Road Isn't Easy,
But I Never Would Back Away...
Boom Boom In The Morning With The Night Sounds
No Way To Run Away
Boom Boom As The Boredome Of Monogamy
Hits One More Time...
No One Must Know...
No One Must Know...
No One Must Know...
No One Must Know This Machine...
Devy Got A Taste Of Some Black Shit
Born In Another Way
And It Probably Would Have Been Easy,
But It Never Worked Out That Way
Boom Boom In The Corner With The Well - Soiled
Bound To Amalgamate
Boom Boom As It Kills The Inhibitions
...No More Games
No One Must Know...
07 Underneath the Waves (03:40)
On And On, It's On And On
On And On, It Goes On And On
And No One Knows Why, No One Knows Why
A New Time, With New Ways
New Thought, A New Age
On And On, It's Gone On And On
On And On, It Goes On And On
Say Goodbye! Say Goodbye! Say Goodbye! Say Goodbye!
No One Knows Why, No One Knows Why
A New Time, With New Ways, New Thought, A New Age
I'm Tired Of Waiting
I'm Tired Of Fighting
I'm Tired Of Waiting For Fucking Nothing
I'm Sick Of Lying
I'm Sick Of Trying
I'm Tired Of Waiting For Fucking Nothing
Tired Of Hating, Bored Of Dying
Tired Of Waking From The Dreams Of Morning
Sick Of Trying, Sick Of Whining
Tired Of Waking From The Dreams Of Morning
I'm Tired Of Waiting
I'm Tired Of Fighting
I'm Tired Of Waiting For Fucking Nothing
I'm Sick Of Lying
I'm Sick Of Trying
I'm Tired Of Waiting For Fucking Nothing
They're Underneath The Waves
They're Underneath The Waves
Underneath The Fucking Waves
They're Underneath The Waves
08 Room 429 (05:21)
What you don't understand
Is where everything's needing
When all of the signs you see still point to overload
As you reach out your hand
A shattered vision's receding
Like daylights along that lonesome stretch of broken road
Because you've been to the past
And it's just a reminder
A recollection of faces that will never come to call
When you've cut through the mask
When you've been through the grinder
Sometimes you forget that you had ever been there at all
Up here in Room 429
The world ain't so unkind
I wanna take you to that empty room tonight
In the shadow of doubt
In the crush of an instant
Standing in the rain outside your door, hand on my knife
When you reach a brick wall
There is still a decision
Always though if I had to lose I'd surely take you all
Up here in Room 429
In a world that's so unkind
I wanna take you to that empty room tonight
We'll tell the world outside the door
That we ain't never coming back no more
We're gonna stay in here 'till we turn out the night
The city breathes so softly
Everything is sleeping
I am at the window silently watching
I can see you standing
Alone against the winter
I can hear you asking, but the streets, they are not giving
Don't look to the ocean
Restless in its dreaming
Don't look to the heavens for they will tell you nothing
If living is for learning
Then dying is forgetting
Once we have forgotten then we can go on loving
In a lifetime of hope
In a second of kindness
There is never a doubt that we are born and die alone
From within or without
There's no way they can find us
When they knock at the door, the lights are on, but we ain't home
Up here in Room 429
The world ain't so unkind
I wanna take you to that empty room tonight
We'll tell the world outside the door
That we ain't never coming back no more
We're gonna stay in here 'till we turn out the night
09 Spirituality (06:34)
I'm Right Here Where You Left Me Experimenting
-Bored Out Of My Fucking Mind...
Please Give Me A Sign,
Please Show Me That You're Alive
There Has Got To Be A Better Way
...Another Place For Me
Please, Help Me Please...
You'll Never Be What You Try To Be If You Want To Be It
God Help The King Of Nothing
It's Getting Late
I'm Getting Old
And Every Night I Just Sleep, We Never Talk
And Every Night, I Look In The Sky
And I Pray To God They'll Hear Me...
And If This Is All There Is
...If This Is It
Won't... Won't Someone Tell Me
Because I'm So Fucking Sick Of All You
Stupid People
All You Sick
Stupid People
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Other reviews
By calus
It’s not Thrash, but something that uses it; it’s not grind or industrial, but frighteningly more emotional and furious.
From the first listen, we come out rightfully drained, annoyed, with the CD ending up on the shelf of disappointments... but then with monthly listens, which will become weekly, which will turn into daily, we will be forced into the 'rite of plundering good intentions' daily by these madmen!
By sephiroth
'City' is a musical treatise on schizophrenia... a treatise that should not be missing in any discography.
You can’t remain indifferent from the first listen to this record... mind-boggling DEVASTATION, there are no other words.
