“We are the tools for a broken machine.”
Have you turned the news on recently? Have you looked out of your front door? It’s nasty out there.
The Beach Boys might have had fun, fun, fun till their daddy took their T-Birds away, but that was the 60s mate, they were high on drugs. They had hope. This is 2024, your dad’s been stabbed, your mums working three jobs and your landlord took the roof from over your heads.
Enter Combichrist. That line at the start of this review comes from the opening “song” (and I use the word in its loosest sense) here “Children Of Violence” and it sets the tone.
“D For Demonic” is like something Al rejected for Ministry for being too “out there” and if you want a mosh in the industrial morass, then get involved, “Only Death Is Immortal” doesn’t concern itself with anything approaching “tune” and the idea of Andy LaPlegua conforming, ever, does perhaps raise the only smile here, as he intones his way through “Compliance”.
Yet, he and his current invading army manage to push the boundaries even further than normal, “Wolves Eating Wolves” pitches up at a metal outpost, while there’s a Wagnerian touch to “Planet Doom” before it finds a sort of Prodigy vibe, and something close to chorus – even if it is “Planet Doom, this is my battleground”. You may as well surrender.
The two-part last one “Violence Solves Everything” surveys its chaos, swaggering, almost gleeful at what it’s caused, asking “How did you want this dream to end?” You don’t get a choice in the matter in honesty.
No fun. Sang The Stooges. They might have been referring to this. Not easy listening. You’re not supposed to “like” this. “COBCRST” is as nasty as licking piss off a nettle, it’s as inhospitable as a hotel in hell, but Combichrist remain unequalled in the world of whatever you call what they do. Post-apocalyptic industrocore or something, probably.
Rating 8/10
