Search - Sitd :: Rot

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Nothing Bl

darklordzden | Australia | 12/17/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"My other half has been a fan of SITD ("Shadows In The Dark" for those of you who don't know to what the acronym pertains) for a number of years now, but in all fairness I could never see what she was raving about. A lot of what she played just sounded like your generic European EBM/Trance to me. However, "Rot" ("Red") has made me appreciate the band in a whole new light.



I'll be honest, I'd grown increasingly bored by the majority of EBM that has risen to prominence in the last ten years; I'd pretty much written off the genre as it just seemed to be descending further and further into a morass of generic trance presets, lumpen, whiny ballads about ex-girlfriends and incestuous scene posturing.



Decent albums capable of holding my interest beyond one or two songs seemed to be in increasingly short supply...



Thank the Gods of 'big stompy industrial' (as my other half refers to it) for "Rot" then, as it marries the euphoric trance sensibilities of contemporary EBM with the good, old-fashioned abrasiveness of nineties industrial - and what's more it's got some absolutely cracking hooks and choruses into the bargain as well. Some songs put me in mind of classic "FLA", "Nitzer Ebb" and "Die Krupps" ("MK Ultra", "Zodiac"), others of Ultra-era "Depeche Mode" ("Destination") and others yet still of directions not taken by once great EBM bands (the largely instrumental "Pride" is a tantalising glimpse of where "VNV Nation" might have gone after Praise the Fallen if they hadn't sacrificed the abrasiveness of their earlier works for a more formulaic, mainstream, crowd-pleasing sound) and some - such as the morbidly atmospheric "Stigmata Of Jesus" - are just their own enigmatic entities.



Lyrically, the band for the most part eschew the modern sensibilities of aforementioned Reznoresque "whiny ex-girlfriend ballads" in favour of some old-fashioned industrial blood and thunder: there are songs apparently sung from the perspective of serial snipers who terrorized San Francisco in the late sixties ("Zodiac" - see Robert Greysmith's book, Zodiac, for further insight), songs concerning covert CIA interrogation research programs ("MK Ultra"), masochistic religious iconography ("Stigmata..."), drug addiction ("Pharmakon") and all points in between. Grim stuff perhaps, but then I've always been of the opinion that listening to a good industrial album should be an experience akin to that of watching a good horror/dark sci-fi/action film.



And if there's one thing that this album has, its a compulsive, pummelling, energetic intensity - which is why it gets a resounding four-point-five stars out of a possible five from me.



...Though I warn you now that you stand a very good chance of alarming passers-by should they hear you growling the insanely catchy chorus of "MK Ultra" ("LSD, Mescaline, Mind Control, Heroin...") as you're pounding down the street listening to it on your MP3 player.

"