Lego

I have to admit I was quite upset by this lego puzzle here the first time I heard it; after the claustrophobic, oppressive grandiosity of “Crust” our friends had to throw this ode to all children’s favourite pastime right after. Why…

experiments of the kind were much more common some 5/6 years earlier, but at the dawn of the new millennium, when the old school was slowly but surely waking up, such frivolities were generally frowned upon as they were siding with the caprices and the whims of a past decade. Sadist never felt tempted by the groovy/industrial/grunge vogues when the time was right for them… why did they decide to give them a go of some sorts when those were quickly fading from the social consciousness?

Well sadists they are, for crying out loud; they like torturing the hapless audience with their stylistic excesses be it with a lush overuse of keyboards (“Tribe”) or with cold depressing vistas (“Crust”). The thing is that in this case they have come close to losing their identity in their strife for moving away from their multi-layered progressive death metal surges. How tired they must have gotten of them became very clear seven years later when the self-titled opus brought them back in all their complex grandeur… but right now we have to deal with a recording that has very little to do with the Sadist repertoire as we all know it, before and after.

Several people, who hold this recording very highly in their polls, have advised, not really pleaded, me to spend more time with it as it had its indelible charm in spades; only if you could have the ears to sense it… well, my ears have very seldom misled me during all these years, and in this particular case they tell me to just be mildly sceptical since this is a Sadist showing, after all; it can’t be that bad. But it’s not that great either, with this grungy quasi-industrial rockabilia that pours from “A Tender Fable” which comes like a noisier fable… sorry, version of the Killing Joke neglected B-sides from the early/mid-90’s, the only more pleasant gimmick at this early stage being the nice cleaner vocals that pop up unexpectedly to disturb the hegemony of the harsh shouty main ones.

Ironically it’s “It's Not Good” that first creates a more positive impression with its operatic keyboard-driven drive, a stomping Die Krupps reminder which cements the unmitigated industrial contamination that fans of the 90’s trends would readily devour including some “Meat”, a more abrasive interpretation of the style of the Seattle movement (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, etc); a tendency which runs through the shorter material as the longer, more seriously-woven one (“Plastic Star”, “Small Great Child”, the dreamy melancholic “Dogs Sledge Man”) is sprawling, psychedelic listening experiences that transcend genre boundaries and accumulate myriad influences, more or less appropriately stitched together. And yet it’s the more simplistic layouts which generate more excitement like the abrasive nervy, “keyboards in grooveland” jumper “Dodgy Fuckin' Cow” or the dancey KMFDM-esque roller-coaster “Welcome to My Zoo”.

Excitement which will be deemed such by lovers of all things 90’s in music as the band’s die-hard fanbase would have run far, far away by the middle of the second song, some of them maybe not ever to return to the Sadist camp… to excuse the band for having woken up relatively late for the possibilities within the past decade would be redundant, to put it mildly; “Crust” was already a dry, sterile entity, a gorgeous one at that; a small industrial upgrade was all that was needed for the guys to conquer this vociferous arena if this was what they wanted to achieve with this. They didn’t have to shed their skin almost beyond recognition, not at the dawn of a new era anyway; one that was openly denouncing such past noisy semblances of music.

Still, as an already converted fan to the industrial metal idea (Die Krupps and KMFDM again, but also Ministry, Skrew, Malhavoc, Swamp Terrorists, Rammstein, etc.) at the time, I don’t want to play hypocritical by saying that I found this outing a total throw-away, even back then; there are some bits and pieces that I learnt to like more with time, but the scary part is that I detect more of those with each subsequent listen. Yeah, you’re right, I should simply stop listening to it; I don’t want to be staring at this review some 6/7 years later, wondering what deeply confused, seriously misguided mind had produced these thinly veiled diatribes.