Howard Gardner, Max Rael and Daniel Vincent are some very British men who are also in Decommissioned Forests and their mission is to create interesting and inventive industrial music. To this end, April the 1st is the release date for the new album, Industry, a curiously befitting title, as the previous debut was called Forestry.
From the first time you listen to any Decommissioned Forest track, you get the sense that this is definitely part of something bigger than just the music. It is electronica painting pictures, with Rael’s vocals and lyrics breathing life into them, in spoken word. The single “Ants Part 1 – Our Last Summer” is, and to quote myself, like dissonant journey that seems pleasant, yet the lyrics are the disembodied oddities of strange and disturbing sequences. Though this is not as dark as “Triggers” that drones and eats at your frailty. without a by your leave, while “Ants Part 2 – Every Trauma Ever After” is a slower refrain in a twilight, that is dimming quickly as life seemingly slips away from us. The organ style music as if is a church of pointless sadness.
Quite frankly, I love the name and concept of “Spectral Kleptomania” as it amazing to think that a spirit can be blamed for nicking everything you can’t find or seems to be missing. Another single, “Drop Brick” could be a mantra to an old Frankenstein movie, with the disturbing and repeating synths while the monster seethes from being unable to be accepted into the world. There is the space and time warping, “Dust Ashes And Other Unimportant Ephemera” as it slowly engulfs your being. When these guys created a short movie, “A Comforting Uncertainty” was the track used. A slow realisation that nothing ever turns out exactly as thought out and you feel disappointment trying to stalk the inevitable misfortune. The final track is “Ants Part 3 – The Universe Is Unaware” and the ants are feigning indifference.
We will keep coming back to the whole Coil thing as it is uncanny how much Max Rael sounds like John Balance. Howard and Vincent have created musical scores that pay homage to an older style of British industrial music, while experimenting to see how they can keep pushing this avant garde genre. Industry is like looking at a polished stone but inside you can see all the jagged, geometric structures within, that contain their own beauty. forged by immense primal forces.
Onyx Music Reviews 