Власть

The idea behind N.K.V.D. is interesting if perhaps hair-raising for some people: the French industrial BM project's name is taken from the acronym for Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, the name of the law enforcement agency in the Soviet Union that carried out orders given from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and which was closely associated with (and at times incorporated) the secret police under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. The agency existed from 1934 to 1946, overseeing all regular police force work, firefighting, running the system of forced labour camps in far-flung parts of the country, conducting executions without due process (that is, obtaining warrants for making lawful arrests and allowing victims to go through the court system to prove their innocence), deporting entire ethnic groups from one part of the USSR to another, carrying out espionage (and political assassinations) abroad and enforcing Stalinist policies. (Thanks again, Wikipedia!) Fortunately or perhaps unfortunately this one-man industrial BM project is not so wide-ranging in its activities but is content for the time being to highlight aspects and episodes of our history in which absolute power and total control by one person or a few over people's lives and society existed. What that power and control might have felt like from the point of view of both the oppressor and the oppressed, the terror that such control evoked, and how that shaped society to the extent that fear became etched deeply into all its levels and might remain there permanently, ready to revive under the right conditions, even after the society thrown off its shackles and its people coming to enjoy democratic rights and freedoms, seem to be the dominant concerns of N.K.V.D. and its solo member, known only as LF.

N.K.V.D.'s debut album "Vlast' " (Russian for "power") does what the title says: it's an expression of power gone absolute and as expected this expression is right throughout the album. The music is based around rapid-fire machine-gun programmed tinny beats embellished with bass riffs of shock and horror, over which death-rattle vocals supplied by an unnamed Swedish guest vocalist detail the terrors of having your thoughts and behaviour monitored by unseen malevolent forces 24/7 and the punishments waiting for those who displease their governments. Recordings of chants, marches, crowd roars and speeches from known dictators and totalitarian governments of the past appear at critical points in most songs. The atmosphere throughout the album is cold, menacing and chilling indeed.

For all the care and attention that LF lavishes on the album's sound and atmosphere, the actual songs tend to sound much the same. Dominated as they are by flippy stuttering beats and repetitive looping riffs that tend to go up and down the scale, tracks segue from one to another like the variations on the theme they are and after about two or three songs, listeners' attention may drift and never catch up with the rest of the album. If each song had some distinguishing musical characteristic associated with the country it's meant to represent - unfortunately speeches or chants in the language associated with the country the song refers to don't help much if listeners aren't familiar with the countries referenced in question - the songs would be more identifiable and a bit more interesting. Different tunes, background atmosphere, moods, even a change of singers from one track to the next, could start off each track and eventually either fall away or merge with the punishing riffs and beats. The point would then be made that regardless of the country's history or culture, totalitarian power eventually has a way of levelling everyone to the same common denominator. The field recordings are not always clear and people unfamiliar with the various languages in the recordings can lose their way through the album.

I must admit I was relieved when the album ended - in spite of a good sound and a chilling ambience, the music does become tedious and uninteresting as it continues to the end.