Suicide
Suicide (The Second Album)

Being Suicide means getting on stage knowing you might die... Night after night, show after show, risking death... Dying at the hands of an audience that rejects you, that can't stand you, that rebels against you... A multitude of mute and futile existences that transform into a flowering, a multiple entity but a unique organism, a multiple organism but a unique entity... Many weak, defenseless lives that unite and strengthen: the audience... And the audience of Suicide throws everything it has to hurl at Alan and Martin, and climbs on stage to beat them... They incite suicide, they incite nihilism, they incite violence, it was said, it was written... But none of this was true. The truth is that humanity's worst enemy is always and forever humanity, whether it rallies in flowering, whether it rallies in the State, whether it rallies as the audience at a Suicide concert; whether it strengthens with whistles and monkey wrenches and strengthens behind sovereignty, law, and rhetoric. Humanity's enemy is humanity, and every man's first enemy is himself. This is the essence of Suicide's art: to reveal to humanity - whether all together or to each individual conscience, time and time again - that there is no way to defend oneself from oneself. And the audience, night after night, show after show, demonstrates that they know but do not want to hear it repeated; they know and want to pretend they're not aware of it. And they attack, and they lash out against those who attempt to strip humanity of its shell of fake lethargy and real hypocrisy. The truth about Suicide is that man is an unevolved animal; that a rabbit, knowing it is prey, decides to be cautious, to hide, whereas man, a cannibalistic and self-consuming monster, certain of being in the image and likeness of God because he wrote it with his own hands millennia ago, in virtue of this conviction, reveals himself with confidence, aggregates with his kind, consumes himself and allows himself to be consumed, effectively committing suicide...

Less sparse atmospheres, all to the benefit of Martin Rev's ten fingers; credit/discredit due to Ric Ocasek's production... At first listen, the entire sound seems "normalized," but "in truth," everything has remained as it should be... It's just that the groove that was in everyone's head on their first album no longer needs to be imagined, as it has been recorded onto the tracks. "Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne" is a black dream; in "Mr Ray" Vega is an iron sergeant turning into a werewolf; "Sweetheart" is the daughter of "Cheree," and Alan Vega is who Elvis Presley, before committing suicide by devouring himself in cheap films and self-consuming caricatures in costume, would have wanted to become and be, without having the courage. Still the Elvis that never was in rock over looped keyboards, and a piper-refrain in "Fast Money Music".

In the dark "Touch Me", Jim Morrison is reborn, and he does so in a world where the expectations and illusions of a generation have been once and for all shredded, swallowed, assimilated, and "finally at last" evacuated... A Morrison who knows only one mushroom, the atomic one. "Harlem" is the masterpiece of panic despair. A dark no wave of harrowing screams, a succession of victims in alleys, family tragedies, domestic violence, road piracy, sirens—the soundtrack of the Big Black City... And of victims and perpetrators who have the same faces...

"Be Bop Kid" is the play while the show is the dreamy "Las Vegas Man", a minimal jewel as bright as light reflecting on a prism... In "Shadazz" the crooner, backed by convincing rhythms and loops, offers us an almost real song. The black black spleen resumes in "Dance", while among appreciable estranging effects (obviously Ocasek branded), Vega borders on spoken word in "Super Subway Comedian". A "suicidal priest" with a 50s quiff in "Dream Baby Dream", while in the finale "Radiation" the minimalist animal regains dominance.

A less immediately impactful album, with a smaller number of manifesto tracks (with the opening "Diamonds, Fur Coat, Champagne", the 'black' "Harlem", and the dreamy "Las Vegas Man" standing out), but no less rich and inspired for this. The formula, in 1979, two years after the debut and eight years after the start of this 'race to nowhere,' is still good, and the results are always up to par. An album that cannot match the predecessor—especially because "Suicide" was the most obvious break with the contemporary music world one can remember—but certainly not deserving of ending up in oblivion, as it is now risking. A must-listen at all costs, with the attention and attitude of those in a modern art gallery, and with each track being a painting, a sculpture...

To create true art, sometimes you have to take big risks... Martin and Alan risked their lives, night after night, show after show...