La Mort

Alpha Drone releases have the advantage over many other bands of making me react strongly. Usually, it’s a reaction to the ugliness of certain parts of the experience, but ‘La Mort’ bears the distinction of initially turning me off due to the vocals, which I can’t usually hear very clearly. Mr Ritter drawls an abrasive nasal monologue over sounds of distortion and broken beats, since he’s expressing the shock of a real alien invasion that, despite all our accurate science-fiction, we’re utterly unprepared for. I, too, was unprepared for a song quite like this at first. Now I understand it's supposed to be ugly, especially when he’s describing “the stench of a million liquefied bodies decomposing”, and I realize the composition is skilful precisely because it works to that effect. On the other hand, the mechanically groovy riff that interjects a couple of times is probably the closest to regular metal that AD has been since the debut album, industrial edge notwithstanding.

The statement of both music and lyrics hits harder than most of the project’s work and the frazzled backing noise produces a suitable atmosphere for the horrors described in the lyrics, though I wouldn’t sit down and listen to ‘La Mort’ like I would a regular song. It’s a dramatic piece, a performance even in recorded form, and I can’t help but be impressed how the elements coalesce to form an affecting whole. If you want to listen to War of the Worlds in under 7 minutes, Alpha Drone has just released the answer.