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Rating: Eldricht was left alone.
Then he met Patricia Morrison, and nobody ever really knew if the pair got along for real.
Then it was Jim Steinman's turn in production and Doktor Avalanche in the control room, a dusty mist emerging as if from a Fritz Lang movie among old Casio keyboards, shoulder sequencers, keytars, dark-oriented but confused landscapes, and sometimes even People from Ibiza.
Floodland was born in 1987 and although the noblest feeling might seem the impetuous bass line of Lucretia My Reflection, both the videoclips and the music are a whirlwind of sound ranging from British gothic rock to the most teased-up darkwave. A whirlwind intertwined with Steinman's baroque aesthetics and those choruses, sometimes so monumental and synthetic, yes, like This Corrosion, the architecture of a new universal gothic sound that knows how to shake up dark souls but also the round curves of some lovely suburban goth girl.
Dominion Mother Russia, a sonic architecture of a dark and universal imaginary. The invocation of Mother Russia, both mother and threat, the prophecy of the danger of lust for power over the West, ( Anthem of the website too? ), makeshift geopolitics in conference with the Apocalypse, Edward Luttwac meet Red Ronnie, Eldricht's mental confusion between the Cold War, the loneliness of dark numbers and Morrison's curves, instrumental minimalism vs. choral monumentality, all of this in a random and chaotic form contributes to the creation of one of the most representative tracks by the Sisters.
The lyrics, black rivers flowing among apocalyptic images and almost biblical visions, Eldritch sings of submerged cities and dark powers, images of Power that evoke the great allegories of authority and decay of Dostoevsky and the menacing landscapes of Poe. In Lucretia My Reflection the female figure is both mirror and ruin, a symbol of decadence and strength, like the gothic heroines of Mary Shelley or the femmes fatales of Baudelaire, an inseparable reflection of the world’s beauty and its inevitable decay.
And then those choruses, so monumental, flashing from a symphonic orchestra, a barbaric arena or a celestial ark in This Corrosion, ritual of destruction and inevitable rebirth. That video, that night, that pouring rain, the purifying water that submerges everything. Corruption becomes almost a philosophical concept, close to the visions of decay of Joris-Karl Huysmans or the cathedrals of ruin by Coleridge; Flood I and Flood II like two chapters from a dark gospel, the water that invades and purifies but also erases, water becoming an ambivalent symbol like in the biblical Flood or the dark waters of The Fall of the House of Usher.
I don`t need no one to understand
Kill the king, when love is the law
And then we`ll turn round
Gimme dream child
And do you hear at all?
Eldritch uses images of dancing with ghosts, of reflections and shadows to transform loneliness and fear into poetry, and the reflections recall Wilde’s mirror obsessions and the dark fairy tales of the German Romantics; there aren’t only political references but also personal ones: the sense of isolation after breaking up with the other band members becomes a metaphor for a collapsing world. The album was born from this solitude and the collaboration with Patricia Morrison and Jim Steinman, who amplified the epic tone. But the real magic is that every lyric seems written like a spell, words that don’t describe but evoke, that don’t tell stories but open doors into visions, and if we don’t find direct explanations, we can read Floodland as an apocalyptic diary, a book of prophecies where Eldritch turns the end of civilization into a gothic dance, a shadow theater that continues to resonate as if it had not been recorded in the ’80s but in a suspended time, and in this suspended time coexist the Bible, Poe, Shelley, Baudelaire, and Wilde, all reflected in the black mirror Eldritch hands us.
And in all its shamelessness, it’s one of my favorites by the Band.
Hey now, hey now now, sing This Corrosion to me
Hey now, hey now now, sing This Corrosion to me
Hey now, hey now now, sing This Corrosion to me
Hey now, hey now now
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Dominion / Mother Russia (07:01)
In the heat of the night
In the heat of the day
When I close my eyes
When I look your way
When I meet the fear that lies inside
When I hear you say
In the heat of the moment
Say, say, say
Some day, some day, some day, Dominion
Come a time
Some day, some day, some day, Dominion
Some say prayers
Some say prayers
I say mine
In the light of the fact
On the lone and level
Sand stretch far away
In the heat of the action
In the settled dust
Hold hold and say
In the meeting of mined
Down in the streets of shame
In the betting of names on gold to rust
In the land of the blind
Be...King, king, king, king
Some day, some day, some day, Dominion
Come a time
Some day, some day, some day, Dominion
Some say prayers
Some say prayers
I say mine
Some day, some day, some day, Dominion
Some say prayers
Some say prayers
I say mine
In the heat of the night
in the heat of the day
When I close my eyes
When I look your way
When I meet the fear that lies inside
When I hear you say
In the heat of the moment
Say, say, say
Some day, some day, some day, Dominion
Some say prayers
Some say prayers
I say mine
I say mine
I say mine
We serve an old moan in a dry season
A lighthouse keeper in the desert sun
Dreamers of sleepers and white treason
We dream of rain and the history of the gun
There's a lighthouse in the middle of Prussia
A white house in a red square
I'm living in films for the sake of Russia
A Kino Runner for the DDR
And the fifty-two daughters of the revolution
Turn the gold to chrome
Gift...nothing to lose
Stuck inside of Memphis with the mobile home, sing:
Mother Russia
Mother Russia
Mother Russia rain down down down
Mother Russia
Mother Russia
Mother Russia rain down
03 Lucretia My Reflection (04:56)
I hear the roar of a big machine
Two worlds and in between
Hot metal and methedrine
I hear empire down
I hear empire down
I hear the roar of a big machine
Two worlds and in between
Love lost, fire at will
Dum-dum bullets and shoot to kill, I hear
Dive, bombers, and
Empire down
Empire down
I hear the sons of the city and dispossessed
Get down, get undressed
Get pretty but you and me
We got the kingdom, we got the key
We got the empire, now as then
We don't doubt, we don't take direction
Lucretia, my reflection, dance the ghost with me
We look hard
We look through
We look hard to see for real
Such things I hear, they don't make sense
I don't see much evidence
I don't feel. I don't feel. I don't Feel
A long train held up by page on page
A hard reign held up by rage
Once a railroad
Now it's done...
I hear the roar of a big machine
Two worlds and in between
Hot metal and methedrine
I hear empire down...
We got the empire, now as then
We don't doubt, we don't take reflection
Lucretia, my direction, dance the ghost with me...
04 1959 (04:10)
Living as an angel in the
Place that I was born
Living on air
Living in heaven
Giving the lie down, the line
To the There's my heaven
And I know
Which way the wind blows
In nineteen fifty-nine
Which way the wind blows
In nineteen fifty-nine
And the wind blows still
And the wind blows wild again
For a little child an never kill this clean
This way
And it feels like me today
Tell me
Do you feel the same?
Isabelle?
Or do you feel like nineteen fifty-nine?
...Do you feel like nineteen fifty-nine?
And the wind blows wild again
And the wind blows wild
In nineteen fifty-nine
In fifty-nine
Isabelle
Do you, do you fell the same?
Come with me
Like a little child
Like another gun
Like homeless, restless, known to none, like
Way beyond the line
Like it never was
In nineteen fifty-nine
05 This Corrosion (10:55)
Gimme the Ring, kissed and toll'd
Gimme something that I missed (Gimme the ring)
A hand to hold, wild and what it seems(Gimme the ring)
Kill the king, when love is the law,
And the we'll turn round... (Gimme the ring)
Gimme dream child
And do you hear me call? (Gimme the ring)
On the loan and on the level
...still on the floor (Gimme the ring)
Sing dream child
And do you hear at all?
CHORUS
(Sing)
(Sing)
Hey now, hey now now, sing This Corrosion to me
Hey now, hey now now, sing This Corrosion to me
Hey now, hey now now, sing This Corrosion to me
Hey now, hey now now, sing...
Gimme siren, child and do you hear me?
Gimme siren, child, and do you hear me call?
Sing, child, of right and wrong
Gimme things that don't last long
Gimme siren, child, and do you hear me call?
CHORUS
On daze, like this
In times like these
I feel an animal deep inside
Heel to haunch on bended knees
Living on if and if I tried,
Somebody send me... please...
Dream wars and a ticket to seem
Giving out and in
Selling the don't belong
Well, what do you say
D'you have a word for Giving Away?
Got a song for me?
CHORUS
I got nothing to say I ain't said before
I bled all I can, I won't bleed no more
I don't need no one to understand
Why the blood run hold
The hired hand
On heart
Hand of God
Floodland and Driven Apart
Run cold
Turn
Cold
Burn
Like a healing hand
Like a healing hand
Like a healing hand
Like a healing hand
06 Flood II (06:46)
And her hallwayMoves
Like the oceanMoves
And her hallwayMoves
Like the sea
Like the sea
She says no no no no harm will come your way
She says bring it on down, bring on the wave
She says: nobody done no harm
Grace of God and raise your arms
She says: face it and it's a place to stay
This, this is the way it was
This, this is the way it is
When the water come rushing, rushing in
CHORUS
She says
She says anytime
Raise your arms
Flood
And her hallway
Like...
Like...
Like a million voices call my name
Like a million voices calling
Not now, not never again...
Sitting here now in this bar for hours
Strange men rent strange flowers
Seconds to the drop but it feels like hours and I
Think I'm going to...going to...
This, this is the way it was
This, this is the way it is
When the water come rushing, rushing in
CHORUS
And her hallway...
CHORUS
09 Torch (03:49)
And now the torch
And shadows lead
Were it not so black and not so hard to see
How can it help you when you don't know what you need
How can anybody set you free?
Would he walk upon the water
If he couldn't walk away?
And would you
Would you carry the torch
For me?
And what if I gave you the key
To the doors of your design...
Lit the corridors of desire?
Where if not so black
And not so hard to see
What use to you then any fire?
Would he walk upon the water
If he couldn't walk away?
And would you
Carry the torch for me?
Would he walk upon the water
If he couldn't walk away?
And would you
Would you carry the torch for me?
Would you carry the torch
For me?
Would you carry the torch
For me?
Would you carry the torch
For me?
10 Colours (07:18)
You reap what you sow
Put your face to the ground
Here come the marching men
Your colours wrapped around
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Other reviews
By Fidia
It would be a crime not to listen to this "Floodland" which constitutes, in my opinion, the highest point of the band's discography and, perhaps, of all dark rock.
"Lucretia (My Reflection)" is distinguished by one of the most beautiful bass lines of the entire genre.
