Armoured Wolves

I don't think I am buying into this. I was more receptive to the sheer noisiness of "My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind", but without the wall of distortion to shroud himself in, Smolken is like a Goth without a smoke machine. Here he is doing the quiet narcotic terror atmosphere by going acoustic, and with what one would generically call an avant-garde approach, which unfortunately lays bare his compositional limitations. Why? Because he uses exactly the same formula for every single track on the album. The same in many respects goes for DRC's other full-length I listened to "Wine, Women and Wolves". I don't know if these are parts of an ongoing series. Judging by the titles (wolves here, wolves there), they are quite possibly tied conceptually, but it still does not quite excuse such formulaic noodling.


You have your slow atonal minor key plucking of assorted strings (guitars, banjos, balalaikas - I don't know) chased by an occasional cello, piano or keyboards and menacingly whispered and/or spoken vocals with accentuated R's (overblown Eastern European accent of a Count Dracula's door usher). There is a lot of rhythmic awkwardness on display (i.e. lots of oddball stops plus many silences in between the sounds, which presumably carry as much meaning as the sounds themselves). Unfortunately, I am afraid that this will sound all too familiar to the more serious music aficionados amongst you, who will probably be able to name a couple of the more experimental classical composers (John Cage or someone of his ilk perhaps) who worked this sort of thing inside-out decades ago.


Come to think of it, Smolken does a significantly better job on the above mentioned later album "Wine, Women and Wolves", which offers better instrumentation arrangements, more varied vocals (sometimes reminding of a cross between CURRENT 93's David Tibet and DEVIL DOLL's Mr. Doctor) with a somewhat more cohesive flow, and as a result - a more effective atmosphere.


As for "Armoured Wolves" - well, recommending it to the artsy, pseudo-intellectual snobs is too easy. Instead, to paraphrase the reviewer before me: if you feel like searching for the key to this - then dive right in.