Death of Self - Embracing The Things We Hate About Ourselves

Normally, I'd pass up listening to an album such as Death of Self's 'Embracing The Things We Hate About Ourselves', something that sounds pitifully mournful and depressing, but as of late, after joining the crew here at Brutal Resonance, I decided that I needed to really open my mind and start listening to all kinds of Industrial. And I am so glad I did, because this album is actually pretty good.

The band, if you are not familiar with them, is based in Chicago, and they label themselves as Industrial-Noise, which is definitely true in their case. And the album uses all that Industrial-Noise to their advantage to make a very kick ass, albeit repetitious, album.

The albums first haunts you with "No Control", which is a good song, and the distorted, tormented, and long, drawn out vocals serve well with all the beats going on in the background. There's a little electronic based sound coming out towards the end of the song, but not much more than that. And this is pretty much the format the rest of the songs take for the album.

They all are slow songs, and they have the haunting vocals that are just absolutely great, but there really isn't much variation. They tend to repeat themselves, like just being caught in a loophole, and not much of the lyrics to the songs do much to actually get close to the title of the album.

They're simplistic, in other words, usually repeating themselves as the songs do. I think my biggest bug was with "Broken Glass", where the phrase "Broken glass" was repeated over and over and over again. I do sound like I am bitching, which I will admit I am, but don't get me wrong. The album is still good, and some of the voice-overs are used to great effect. My personal favorite voice-over comes from the song "The Machine", for it utilizes lines from Midnight Express, and the dark tones of the film goes great against the backdrop of this aphotic album.

But the voice-overs to tend to get a little over used. It's great when a band can find that perfect movie line to go along well with their songs, but when half the song is a line from a movie, I kind of get annoyed. I'd rather hear what the band has to say on the issue than a fictional character.

However, "More Interactions With Each Other", whose lyrics and vocals were done by it-clings, settles between all of this perfectly. It's a song, more like a very long monologue done by a sociopath, that just follows through the thoughts of a deranged man. And in the end of his psychotic rant, he states, "I'm fine with being terrible...I'm terrible and I want to be worse." Now, if anything, THAT is a man who truly embraces what he hates about himself.

Now, as I said, this album has a ton of flaws, from repetition, to voice-over abundance. Be it as it may, the album still manages to suck you in like a crack whore. It really is a sickening album, but the good kind of sickening that makes you want to come back for more, just because you find a sort of dark humor behind it all, and possibly find yourself checking yourself in the mirror, wanting to love the flaws about yourself. Dec 12 2012