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The year is 1981, the album is "Faith": the dark opus of The Cure.
The cassette version, and only that one, contains a surprise on side B. The shout on the cover promises "2 albums for the price of 1": on one side the usual tracklist of Robert Smith and company's funereal masterpiece, on the other a terrifying instrumental nightmare of about 27 minutes: "Carnage visors", indeed. Placed in the most unlikely spot of all, extremely difficult to find for years when cassettes began their slow decline, the best-hidden diamond in the band's history remained so until 2005, the year of the reissue of "Faith" in deluxe CD version with all possible special contents, including this one.
It is the soundtrack of a black-and-white short film that opened the live concerts of the "Picture tour" of 1981: "Faith" had just been released and the atmosphere that permeated it would transform that tour into an emotional journey for The Cure themselves: Smith (as much as one can trust him...) declared that they almost always left the stage in tears.
"Carnage visors" is the perfect introduction to those leaden concerts, and a sort of minimal distillate of that sense of death that impregnated "Faith".
The difference is mainly chromatic: if the actual album is mostly black, with flashes of white light showing cadaveric shadows and non-Euclidean perspectives worthy of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", the soundtrack that complements it is the apotheosis of gray.
Gray is the color of fog, of granite, of lead. In gray one gets lost, swirls, we abandon connections with the world. Gray is damp, cold, viscous but never arrogant.
Color of tombstones and sheet metal, without the blinding certainty of other colors.
More than a color, it is an essence, a state of mind... an uncertain place.
Gray is the color of doubt. A reassuring blanket of ancient dust under which to hide and be lulled by unresolved questions, to be devoured by nothingness with gratitude, to finally erase the noise... because gray soundproofs, it is the low fog of the Po Delta that transforms voices and laughter into spectral trails of faraway life.
Listening to "Carnage visors" is like slowly sliding down an inclined plane, into the fog. You know that reaching the bottom of the gray will probably devastate you, that something much worse awaits at the bottom, but you can't help but get closer and closer.
You repeat to yourself continuously, as in the most famous scene from "La Haine": "So far so good, so far so good"... until you turn the cassette and the death knells of the sacred hour begin.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
04 A Short Term Effect (00:00)
movement
no movement
just a falling bird
cold as it hits the bleeding ground
he lived and died...
catch sight
cover me with earth
draped in black
static
white sound
a day without substance
a change of thought
an atmosphere that rots with time
colours that flicker in water
a short term effect
scream!
as she tries to push him over
helpless and sick
with teeth of madness
jump jump dance and sing
sideways across the desert
a charcoal face
bites my hand
time is sweet
derange and disengage everything
a day without substance
a change of thought
the atmosphere rots with time
colours that flicker in water
a short term effect
an echo
and a stranger's hand
a short term effect
an echo
and a stranger's hand
a short term effect
05 The Drowning Man (00:00)
She stands twelve feet above the flood
She stares
Alone
Across the water
The loneliness grows and slowly
Fills her frozen body
Sliding downwards
One by one her senses die
The memories fade
And leave her eyes
Still seeing worlds that never were
And one by one the bright birds leave her...
Starting at the violent sound
She tries to turn
But final
Noiseless
Slips and strikes her soft dark head
The water bows
Receives her
And drowns her at its ease...
I would have left the world all bleeding
Could I only help you love
The fleeting shapes
So many years ago
So young and beautiful and brave
Everything was true
It couldn't be a story...
I wish it was all true
I wish it couldn't be a story
The words all left me
Lifeless
Hoping
Breathing like the drowning man
Oh Fuchsia!
You leave me
Breathing like the drowning man
Breathing like the drowning man
07 Pornography (00:00)
a hand in my mouth
a life spills into the flowers
we all look so perfect
as we all fall down
in an electric glare
the old man cracks with age
she found his last picture
in the ashes of the fire
an image of the queen
echoes round the sweating bed
sour yellow sounds inside my head
in books
and films
and in life
and in heaven
the sound of slaughter
as your body turns
but it's too late
one more day like today and i'll kill you
a desire for flesh
and real blood
i'll watch you drown in the shower
push my life through your open eyes
i must fight this sickness
find a cure
i must fight this sickness...
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