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Reviewed
by: Darklight
This
is a best of CD that includes Phallus Dei material recorded from 91-95.
There is so much different sounding songs delivered here that this seems
like a compilation by different bands and not an album by one band.
The first song "Spiral" is a very slow and mellow dark track with piano,
drums and gothic sounding deep male vocals. Song two "Death And The
Maiden" mixes ambient sounds, heavy drum beats, guitar and distorted
yelling. It's kind of experimental and couldn't work on the dance floor.
Song three "Dog" is a slow haunting gothic track with dark keyboards,
bass and deep sung vocals. Song four "The Arising" is a fairly aggressive
dark metal industrial track with electronics, synths, thrashy guitars,
slamming drum beats and growling vocals. Song five "Pornocrates" is
another aggressive metal industrial song that flat out rocks with kick
ass rhythms and beats created with electronics, thrashy guitars and
shouting distorted vocals. Song six "The Outer Bone" combines a lot
of mood and emotion with shifting musical styles that go from slow and
beautiful to heavy and aggressive. It's sounds like a gothic metal song.
Song seven "Circles On Circles" is a dreary, dark and moody track with
a haunting vibe combined with both deep male vocals and rather beautiful
female vocals provided by Gitane Demone. Song eight "She Suffers" is
yet another heavy industrial song with thrashy guitars, hard drum beats
and distorted vocals. Song nine "Tortured Heroine" is a dark and moody
track that has beautiful synth melodies combined with hard driving drum
beats and voice samples. Song ten "Phallus Theme" is a dramatic movie
soundtrack style piece. It would have actually been a good opening or
ending for this album. It doesn't sound right being thrown in as track
ten. Song eleven "Sacrum Convivium" is an annoying ambient noise piece.
Song twelve "Dead Birds Floating" is another ambient noise track that
I personally don't find interesting in the least. Most of the material
on this album is good. However, there is a lot of variety here. The
mixture of dark gothic songs, metal songs and ambient instrumentals
just makes the overall album seem kind of all over the place. This could
be due in part to the songs just not seeming to be set in the right
order. Whatever it is, I find it difficult to go from a soft mellow
haunting track right into an aggressive metal track. But I do give the
band credit for including a lot of variety and delivering some very
quality music. If you like genre mixing on albums, you will enjoy what
this CD has to offer.
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