Well if the sounds of this are akin to taking Methadrone it is a damn good advertisement against the drug. As far as I am aware it is a legal high that is akin to speed, E and MDMA. It may seem fun attempting better living through chemistry but it’s no laughing matter when you are forced to give it all up and have to resort to anti-depressants to cope with the futility of life’s existence. As a great scholar once said, “drugs are bad m’kay.”
Here we are more than happy to thrive on downer music, be it atmospheric or funeral doom, suicidal black metal, depressive Goth we generally embrace it. This CD however has really come up trumps and has out-topped itself in the misery stakes. Is that a compliment? Well no not really as this is too dour, sombre, maudlin, insert whichever descriptive word you wish for its own good and listening to it for almost an hour is quite a damn challenge, even for someone who considers themselves a bit of an expert in dwelling in depressiveness.
I grabbed this as soon as I saw the group from New Jersey’s list of influences, which ticked all the right boxes; Swans, Dead Can Dance, Controlled Bleeding, Laibach, Jesu, Death In June to name a few. ‘Flight To Nothing’ which opens the album is more of a fragile sounding ambient Indie type number. The bass line is very Joy Division and the choral parts, Lush, Slowdive and even Cocteau Twins with a melody that although floaty is downright depressingly dirge laden. A dreamy womb like state is felt in ‘Biodone’ again the music actually does very little, it flows embryonically perhaps and does to a certain extent console but it goes nowhere in its minimalism. Quite reflective male vocals come into play on ‘Cold Deep Blue’ and honestly the titles of the numbers on this album do better at painting a picture of what to expect than any words I could use. By about the fourth song the grief inducing and fragmentary nature has become too much. This lot should go on tour and have Malefic from Xasthur wailing along and people would be lining up to top themselves. In a similar vein towards experimental black metal bands using song titles with strange drug names such as ‘Buprenorphene’ and ‘Dolophine’ is the sort of thing I would expect from oddball scene hoppers Velvet Cacoon, surprised that particular band have not put this on a website and claimed it as their own.
There is not a huge amount more to say here, there is no big change musically as we go forward. It exists, it is there, it is in the ether and the only great difference you will encounter is by pressing the stop button. I am not saying that this album is completely without merit, some may well get off on the ambience and the atmosphere it creates, perhaps those that take aforementioned drugs will find it excellent. It’s not for me though and for once I can only use the words I never thought I would in a review, ‘too depressing.’
http://www.myspace.com/methadrone
