Deflore - Egodrive
I'm continuing my look at weird, noisy metal stuff today with Deflore's "Egodrive." First, some background:
I was really into Ministry in Junior High. My mom objected to the title of Psalm 69. It was one of the worst moments of my life to find out my mom knew what "69" meant, while I had to pretend I didn't. I have fond memories of listening to that record from the eight grade, however.
In fact, Ryan and I turned everyone in our 8th grade social studies textbooks into Al Jourgensen by giving them all black beards, cowboy hats, dreadlocks, and sunglasses. All 40 or so presidents were Al Jourgensen by the time we were done with them.
So a week or two ago Ministry played their supposedly last shows in Chicago. It was four or five nights or a row or so and they played all their stuff chronologically, or something like that. A friend of mine who's into that kind of thing asked me if I wanted to hit up one of the shows. "Sure," I said. "I'll check out one of Ministry's last shows." I was a bit psyched for the show. I kind of felt like I'd be reliving some nice Junior High memories by checking it out.
When I looked up the price for the shows, however, which were upwards of $50, I changed my mind about seeing Ministry pretty quickly. I have fond memories of listening to them from Junior High, but not $50 worth.
So that's basically my relationship with what could be called heavy electronic music. The kind of stuff that some people call industrial. I listened to a few of the bigger bands fifteen or so years ago, but have never really had a whole lot of experience with it, and wouldn't consider even the pioneers of the genre to be worth fifty of my hard earned bucks today.
So when Subsound Records sent us a copy of the new CD "Egodrive" by Italian industrial band Deflore I was a bit skeptical. I mean... look at the cover. That's unlike the cover of anything I own. I opened the CD up and there's just two guys in the band, one who's listed as "low tones" and one who's listed as "high tones" or something like that. And there's a picture of them looking all tough at the camera. This falls decidedly outside the range of normal stuff I would listen to.
Having said that, on the inside of the CD case it also said, in big letters "WE PLAY LOUD."
Fair enough. I was intrigued.
So I put the CD on and was absolutely assaulted by some truly, truly heavy shit.
Once again, my reference points for this kind of music are a bit rusty, but to me this sounds like Nine Inch Nails when they were at their best crossed with Enemy of the Sun/Through Silver in Blood era Neurosis. The riffs are are just pummeling. Real kick you in the gut kind of heaviness to the guitar and bass work going on here.
They also manage to combine a lot different, cool elements together into each of their songs. There's a lot of heaviness, but also some cool melody care of some keyboardy type parts, and even some disjointed techiness every once and a while. I also like that the songs are both short and instrumental, both of which I think help hold my attention on something like this.
It should also be pointed out that I imagine this shit KILLING live. I can't picture anything but two Italian guys rocking out, bringing the wall of face shredding, sternum cracking noise like their countryman Lucio Fulci brings the face shredding, sternum cracking gore, only, unlike Fulci, Delore don't appear to have a problem with women who aren't, you know, dead.
So yeah. This is some good shit. Outside what I'd normally listen to, but I'm real glad I gave it a try. It'll be going into my rotation. If you're like me and tend to turn up your nose at stuff labeled "industrial" you might want to do yourself a favor and drop that for this record. There's more than enough heaviness and atmosphere here to satisfy someone like me, and I can really imagine a lot of people digging this.
And if Deflore ever hit up Chicago I'll be front and center getting my chest caved in.
Cracking Sternums?
