Oh dear! I was really looking forward to this, especially after reading the publicity blurb which stated that Black Dice have for the last fifteen years been re-inventing punk music and mutating it into new sonic stews. What went wrong?
OK, well Black Dice are a New York based trio of Eric Copeland, Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren. They have been prolific and this is their sixth album. Their bio also states that in taking punk to new directions, the band have been incorporating feedback, processed vocals and alien sounds. So far, so good. Then I actually listened to the CD. To say that the publicity blurb doesn’t quite sum things up is an understatement. What it states and what you actually hear couldn’t be further removed.
On listening, I found that I couldn’t really understand the point of this. Yes, music should always be mutating and evolving. Bands like Cabaret Voltaire used loops and feedback along with electronic noise. The Fall did pretty much the same thing during their “techno” period in the 1990s. Cabaret Voltaire managed to progress post industrial art rock and convey a sense of outraged alienation in the bleak wasteland of the Thatcher years. The Fall always retained their garage rock sensibilities even when they were experimenting with electronica, and Mark E. Smith was always able to put across his edgy angst and withering sarcasm. Unfortunately for Black Dice, these points are entirely absent. There is but a complete vacuum.
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There are nine tracks on the album: all differing arrangements of fuzz bass, pulses, synth and electronic drums and other electronic feedback. On the tracks that have a degree of lead vocal, this is done via severe distortion (OK, Throbbing Gristle did that on ‘Zyclon B Zombie', but you wouldn’t want more than one track like that on any album), but this has the effect of rendering any message or manifesto that the band wishes to put across as totally incomprehensible. And it all does zilch in furthering any ambitions they may have.
Whilst I can understand that this may have some relevance in a post-industrial trance scene, an album such as this will alienate followers far more than attracting new adherents. And if your listeners cn't find a way in, everything's rendered pointless.
The overheated publicity blurb states that this album explores the uncommon ground between The Seeds punk primitivism, Funkadelic and Royal Trux. If The Seeds' Sky Saxon could hear that he’d given birth to this, he’d be spinning in his grave.
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