Suicide
Suicide

For those who love "strange" sounds, experimentation, and various madness, it's unlikely they'll be shocked by listening to something like this. I've encountered everything, listening to electronic buzzes, songs sung by cats, crazy deviants using whips as a rhythmic session. However, in front of this legendary masterpiece, I had to reflect and catch my breath.
"Suicide," the album by the band of the same name, was released in '77, emerging from the New York underground and disrupting already disoriented ideas with the ongoing punk revolution. The duo of Alan Vega on vocals and Martin Rev on keyboards and effects have created a true urban symphony, a mad interpretation of everyday life in the metropolis. The rhythm is inspired by the motion of the subway, a tangled web of tunnels from which one can reemerge after hours...
The duo's background is complex and accomplished like few others. Since 1971, they performed in underground circles and modern art galleries, offering reinterpreted and decadent blues classics. In these rich and cultured environments, also an inexhaustible source of depravation and chic decay!, the duo developed a sound that embraces American rockabilly and minimalism, with Vega's funerary singing, a shamanistic figure second only to Jim Morrison.
The album is threatening from the cover: the band's name dripping blood, but the listening is far worse. "Ghost Rider" is the opening track, a song with a pulsating, syncopated rhythm, perfect in its balance between voice and the electronic drones that Rev skillfully dispenses. With "Rocket USA," we officially descend into the labyrinths of the underground. The rhythm is infernal, relentless, Vega's sighs are haunting, the Manzarek-style keyboards create a sick, lascivious party. "Cheree" is a unique ballad of its kind, unrepeatable. The zombie Vega declares "Cheree, Cheree I love you..." with utmost depravity, his voice a ticket to damnation, all guided by the xylophone... "Jonny" is a manipulation of the 50s rockabilly, the usual mechanical "pulsing" with an obsessive synth tracing the melody. "Girl" is an explicit sexual invitation. Vega with his voice simulates orgasms, invites to sin "Touch me so..", "Turn me on..". Rev's accompaniment is immense, the raga motif in the style of the Doors sneaks into the mind and gives no respite. It could be the ideal accompaniment for sexual maniacs. It might suffice, but the worst is lurking, just in the next track. "Frankie Teardrop" is the nightmare in music. The obsessive rhythm, the duo's trademark, gives no respite.
Alan Vega recounts sequences of very ordinary life: going to eat, returning home. The pauses are unnaturally distressing, interrupted by piercing screams, vocal manipulations, reverberations, nonsensical xylophone notes. For 10 long minutes, there are no more certainties; it feels like you'll never emerge from that damned underground, from this cursed album. "Che" closes the album; it is the end, the worthy funeral, the requiem.

In thirty-one minutes, history is written; one of the most violent, sick, and insane albums of all time is given to posterity. When reason returns to take possession of my person, I manage to grasp the incredible fusion of opposites, the disarming simplicity of this music, and the emotional degeneration with which it is expressed, the sweetness of Rev's keyboards, and the irreverence of Alan Vega's singing. It's as if hell and paradise were fucking each other to exhaustion, until the death of both lovers.