Strapping Young Lad
The New Black

THE REVIEW

The new black is unseen.

It is something that hides behind our fictitious reality. It is hidden in every gesture, in every breath, in every damn daily act. Turn on the TV and it's there watching you with the reassuring and vacant eyes of a TV host, you hear it speak on the radio, you can spot it curdled among supermarket shelves, in the perfect garden of your neighbor, among the glossy pages of a magazine, at work, on the street, at home....

We see it every day, you know it exists, it envelops you, it sneaks everywhere, but we pretend not to notice it; you can even smell it, but just the thought is annoying, you can't handle it, too heavy, too invasive, better to concentrate on what you're doing at that moment, even if it has no meaning and is of little importance. But the new black is there, waiting patiently, now or later makes no difference.
A shiny, dazzling black, so dazzling that our eyes have grown accustomed to it and stagger in this source of light, not realizing the disintegration of surrounding matter. Just like the image suggested by the cover of the new album by Strapping Young Lad. The Canadian group does exactly this: it strips the new black and lays it bare before our still bleeding eyes. The result can be twofold: complete ecstasy or disappointment.

Ecstasy: our vision becomes clearer as the minutes roll on and the torment of the new black is underway; "Decimator" pierces our senses, nullifying them, and already frightens us... it's in human nature to fear the crumbling of Earth. "You Suck" comes like an electric shock directly installed in our nervous system, reminding us that we are nothing, complete nullities, a series of zeros lined up and pre-arranged; "Anti Product" reinforces the concept, with its martial and robotic stride, coming to mock us with strings and winds halfway through the piece. The crumbling of the new black is getting faster, we don't realize it in time as an electrical tornado lifts us in the air and hurls us back and forth: sometimes a bit of violence is needed to understand, to grasp, to make a move... and that's exactly what "Wrong Side" does: we are on the wrong side, we know it, try to find an escape route, run, maybe it's not too late, maybe not all bridges have been demolished!

The corridor of the new black is dissolving ever faster, masses of data collapsing and some fragments of the walls detaching, revealing electric blue sound sets: "Far Beyond Metal", "Fucker", and "The New Black".
As the last fragments of the title-track finish coursing through our veins, the new black has been sucked into the vortex it itself created, while, still incredulous and disconnected from the environment, our new Self opens/widens its eyes with serenity but with renewed wonder to never let them darken again by any new black.

No peace for you, little man.