NEPTUNE - Gong Lake

It's almost as if a doctor had prescribed it: every now and then you need a good dose of venomous, creative noise-rock. And it doesn't much matter if the results aren't always what we'd hope for: brilliant, innovative, ahead of their time.

You settle for what you get and enjoy it, especially with this trio from Boston, Massachusetts, who've spent almost fifteen years indulging their love of a devastated, industrial noise-punk, often produced with an arsenal of homemade instruments, recycling scrap metal and whatever else is at hand, in a fine arty massacre of which the opening "Silver Pool" is a lovely invitation card to hell.

The spirit is that of Einstürzende Neubauten, but the alienation is all ours, all Western: you'd like to be better than you are, but fate (of which, let's cut the nonsense, we are not the architects...) spits in your face without remorse.

These "metallic" landscapes in ruin ("Grey Shallows"), amid techno-surreal frescoes ("Paris Green") and bleak slides of desertified cities where a lone crooner declaims ("Yellow River"), announce - with rage all imploded and electronically transfigured/pushed into delirium ("Copper Green", "Black Tide", "Ebbing") - yet another rebirth of no-wave civilization, yet another prophecy of a nihilism with no way out.

The air is heavy, feelings waver, the heart bursts. Better the darkest night than a stale, melancholy sunset. Like the Pere Ubu of "Dub Housing", with Nick Cave lurking in the shadows moaning like a serial killer, as they abandon the "modern dance" to its fate as an endless circle of death ("Black Tide")...

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20/03/2008