IC 434 - Anhedonia

Let's clear the air about a few things, shall we? EBM is now rife with vapid wikiwits who espouse style over substance, amateur hour is in full swing as everyone's in a band or running a label (and being mighty vocal about it)... all striving to be "someone" and for the most part, all failing miserably. As a genre it is on vapors, nearing pure comedy in 2012 but I like IC 434, kiddies. Geert De Wilde's name is on more than a few album sleeves of mine and my word has his sound changed since I first heard him in the 90s. Think of all the acts during that decade who chose to innovate and push the conceptions of what this sound could be, now how many are still around, how many escaped the one and done album syndrome? This record is a shiny piece of mechanized brute force, yet it is also extremely varied. Far more so than what I get tricked into hearing that comes out of the wading pool of electronic body music normally. You have your club killers, don't doubt it, but there's a balance; absolute aggression is tempered by a feeling of smoldering anger. Geert plays around with his beats and basslines expertly, he knows right when to raise the tempo and like a veteran... when to let it go.

Unsurprisingly, IC 434 get the "old school" tag applied to them by virtue of how long they've been around but there is nothing regressive or dated about what's getting let out of the Horsehead Nebula. You put this monster on and it's time to get down to business, there is hardly any room to catch a breath as IC 434 pack one hell of a wallop into each of the twelve tracks on 'Anhedonia'. Nice melodies are also a prominent feature, which once again, I'm taken back by as his earlier works from years ago were brutal little affairs indeed. I think that if Project Pitchfork had decided to just go for full on assault in their music, this is how it would come across because let me tell you, this guy snarls with the best of them. Oh yeah, there aren't any insipid samples about chopping people up or raping them either. IC 434 do not pander with cliches, this is an impressively thought out work of cold cold menace. The lyrical topics embraced on 'Anhedonia' are rather dark in nature (you're shocked, I know) but instead of just wallowing in the shit of this world, De Wilde fights back.

Here's another point to ponder: his instrumentals are every bit as solid as the vocal tracks. They compliment each other, adding to the overall firepower of this bristling outing and then increasing the dynamic range dramatically.

Damn do I love it when he drops the pace, his work is as disturbing as anything Second Disease or Disharmony have ever done. Two excellent outfits, by the way. I never got a chance to plug 'While The Masses Sleep' unfortunately, and a vicious rhinestone of a record it is but I'm definitely feeling the borderline psychosis on "Anhedonia". Ass kicking dark electro is such a rare commodity in the current times, even rarer is the precision grade material we're gifted from a consummate pro like our Belgian hero here. The one -and only- flaw of his newest is that it does succumb to the plague of going on a bit too long. Despite this, I've played this thing into the ground without regrets of any kind, there's a real feeling of craftsmanship I come away from the band's latest effort with and so will you. Top notch arrangements abound, from the opening shots across the bow right through to the bone-crunching finale.

The latter part of this record is the most enjoyable section because that's where IC 434 stop really being anything other than diabolically infectious. Yes, I'm older but when I hear a song like "The Waiting", I'm right back to the days of roaming this city in the early morning hours on more than a few drugs. Perhaps this is the only thing "old school" about what he's done: he reminds many of us why we discovered this kind of music in the first place. Only now we all live on our own and our parents are rotting in the suburbs instead of confiscating our walkmans but the taste for this sort of thing remains. Kudos. Jan 14 2012