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Rating: Throbbing Gristle were undoubtedly one of the most radical and influential bands of the new wave. No one can deny them the credit for creating a cacophonous, pounding, and "concrete" sound that would be known as "industrial." From the very beginning, the London quartet was attracted to the dehumanization of modern man, supplanted by the unstoppable rise of automatism. The theme is always the same, recurring more or less among all the "intellectual" artists of the period.
What set Throbbing Gristle apart was the way they expressed their disgust, striving to provoke the utmost disgust. Their multimedia performances were gruesome and sadistic, with projections bordering on horror. They recorded, like scattered notes, any kind of "found" sounds: conversations, jackhammers, phone rings, press machines, automobiles. All this to create a picture of total alienation, a black and white image that takes us straight back to the devastating nightmare of David Lynch's Eraserhead.
The same cover of this album in its apparent tranquility is unsettling. Those sadistic smiles portrayed in a bucolic scene have something dramatic, revealed immediately once you look at the back cover. The same image, but in black and white, and especially the naked body of a corpse at their feet. Now their expressions do seem fitting.
And to think this is considered the breakthrough album of Throbbing Gristle, the work that marks the opening towards a more malleable sound. This is partly true, but only if related to what Throbbing Gristle were two years earlier, upon the release of Second Annual Report, their first work and undoubtedly the most extreme. But don't expect "melodies" and catchy choruses. The underlying theme remains that of industrial curse, always traversed by the usual thread of perversion that characterizes them.
The aim is always to exhaust the listener, only this time they use less violent means. Indeed, in some ways, they try to induce a state of mental desolation not unlike hypnosis.
Listen to a track like "Persuasion" to realize this. A nerve-wracking ticking... then a steady bass tone, then background voices coming and going, and a tiresome filtered chant that intones a mechanical lullaby. An industrial lullaby. It's the black and white side of a love song. Stripped of all its emotional charge, of all its romantic passion, nothing remains but a mere robotic beat, a glacial inhuman tolling. It's man swallowed by the machine.
The same fate befalls dance music. "Hot On The Heels Of Love" is indeed a dance for humanoids, certainly not for men, a frenzied ballet for discos populated by cyber intelligences. Even reggae meets the same end, disfigured by the cruel desolation of the title track.
However, the essence of their mental state on the brink of collapse is undoubtedly in the 12 terrifying minutes of "Discipline," the industrial equivalent of Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop." Violent beats of frantic electronics, a tremendous pulse, practically an alien anthem, and over everything a distant desperate voice, the cries of a madman, a man surrendering to his fate, in the throes of cerebral convulsions, the final stage of the total alienation process.
Definitely not an album for everyone, frightening in its drawing of gloomy and ghostly landscapes, it nonetheless represents an excellent testimony of the atmosphere in the industrial England of the late '70s, but above all embodies the beginnings of a genre that will find great success and dissemination in the future, but could only be born in that place, at that moment.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
03 Still Walking (04:44)
still walking
share of thee water
in its element
like all of us
like a book
spell of semen
wall of silence
or too?
this end
or all of us
he said
all of us do it
each time asleep
each time he said
especially again
especially item
the totem was his
the uncle was his
every time it fell open
at the same ritual
every time she said
the words he cried
and no one saw
that's how it is
he said
that's the whole problem
each time
she said
05 Convincing People (04:48)
There's never a way
And there's never a day
To convince people
You can play their game
You can say their name
But you won't convince people
There's several ways
There's several ways
To convince people
It's the name of the game
It's the name of the game
Convincing people
Convincing people
There's several ways
There's several ways
To convince people
And there's several days
And there's never a way
To convince people
There's one way though
That you'll never convince people
And that's when you try
To be someone
Who's not telling
And who's not trying to compel
Who's trying to tell you
What you ought to be
Convinced of
So there's several ways
And there's several days
To convince your people
And you are the people
Convincing people
Convincing people
There's never a way
And there's never a day
To convince people
There's several ways
There's several days
We don't want to convince people
Let me tell you
I'll tell you what I want you to do
It's no way, no way, no way
To convince people
08 Persuasion (06:34)
Persuasion
You gotta get some
Persuasion
You gotta get some
Look at me I touch your breast
Look at me I touch your knees
And I persuade you
Like always I persuade you
Like always I persuade you
Persuasion
Look at me I touch your head
I say the words and you go to bed
My sister and my mother
My father and my son
Do everything I want them to
With persuasion
One lot of persuasion
Like always persuasion
Now there's lots of ways to persuade you
I could do it with money
I could look at you
I could show you all that
You might as well do it anyway
You might as well choose to play the game
After all you've seen yourself before
What difference does it make if I take your photograph?
What difference does it make if someone else sees it too?
All your friends do it
I mean nobody will know it's you
Anybody, it could be any body
I mean, these magazines, you know,
They only go to middle aged men
So why don't you do what I suggest
I persuade you
With words I persuade you
Persuasion
I've got a little biscuit tin
To keep your panties in
I've got a little biscuit tin
To keep your panties in
Soiled panties, white panties, school panties, Y-front panties
By the canal, by the canal
And I persuade you
Like always I persuade you
Look at me
Look at me
There's a certaing word and a certain touch
A certain way and a way too much
There's a little bit here
And a little bit there
When you've done it all it's too late to care
Oh I persuade you
Like always I persuade you
Look in my eye
Under your covers
I touch you
And tell you what to do
Do it because I tell you
Do it because I love you
And I persuade you
Persuasion
11 Six Six Sixties (02:04)
I am one of the injured
A tear blurs flesh
Dissolving
Like an injured dog
Like wasted limbs
Get smaller
Pain is the stimulus of pain
But then of course nothing is cured
This is the world now
Move a fin and the world turns
Sit in a chair and pictures change
Try to eat us
And get trapped
Or injured
Just
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Other reviews
By Armand
It is an alienating sabbat that with their hypnotic prayers ruthlessly seeks to reduce the distance between body and soul.
The pleasure in listening is new, where that part of enjoyment we know ... does not coincide much with that 'jazz-funk' we thought we knew.
