Artist: Digitalis Purperea
Title: Emotional Decompression Chamber
Type: Album
Label: Aural Music
Back in the mid-late Nineties, Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson were the absolute kings of all they surveyed. Purveyors of ‘dark yet danceable’ electro metal, their works dominated rock clubs across the country, mesh-topped teenagers gyrating enthusiastically to their pulsating rhythms. Nevertheless, depending on your perspective, all good things must come to an end and the goth industrial star is no longer in the ascendancy - indeed, it all seems a little bit dated and silly these days. Except no-one seems to have told Digitalis Purperea that.
Mastermind P Greco obviously still thinks it’s 1997 as every song on ‘Emotional Decompression Chamber’ could have literally been lifted from Marilyn Manson’s ‘Mechanical Animals’ album. Laced with sleazy, lurching electro-rhythms, buzzing guitars and distorted/filtered vocal phrasings, it almost comes across as a pastiche of the genre so adherent is it to the trappings of a well-worn style. While Mr Greco demonstrates an appreciation of some wider sonic textures - the gentle piano that plays across ‘Devote’ or the welcome analogue guitar chords that decorate ‘Musclebound’ spring to mind - in the main, this is is decidedly tired stuff. Each song plays out a wearily familiar pattern of characterless electro-rock, free of any real sense of invention. There’s very little to distinguish it from the myriad protagonists who have followed in Marilyn Manson’s wake save for the faint whiff of absurdity lent to proceedings by P Greco’s distinctive Italian accent as he intones - without irony - the frankly ludicrous lyrics whilst simultaneously trying to adopt an Americanized sneer.
It all adds up to a rather bizarre experience, exemplified by the laughable ‘Magic Cube’ with it’s unintentionally hilarious refrain ‘I am looking for a job - coz I need an alibi!’. This stuff is clearly meant to be taken seriously but the banality of the execution married with the fact that it’s about fourteen years out of date means that sadly, it can only be appreciated as something of a joke.
http://www.myspace.com/digitalispurpurea
http://www.devoid.in
