Painbastard - Kriegserklärung

Release Date: 16th April 2010
Label: Accession Records



Album Review

If there was any information leaking through at all about the current work of German PAINBASTARD it concerned them working on a new full-length record. The two have left their sonic brewery now and came out with a bunch of new tracks, compiled on 'Kriegserklärung'.

Opening act 'Rebellion des Gewissens' introduces with heavenly thickness, underplayed with the pervasive speech taken out of 'The Great Dictator' by Charlie Chaplin and occasional muffled drums. Even though that movie and thus the speech are 70 years old it is terrifying how perfectly it fits our current world's situation. "Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed..." and it has gotten worse since. Being second in line 'BCM' (Binary Coded Message) breaks upon with the urgency of bone-crushing beats and surprisingly clean vocal delivery that however conveys a significant share of contempt and fury, clawing its message into the listener's minds with force. What if the soul could talk? What would it tell us? In case of the next track 'SIN - Seele In Not' (Soul in Need) it highlights the down sides of human existence. How it is slowly choked to death by its proprietor's inconceivable acts of betrayal, deception and one of the worst things you can possibly imagine: Abusing children! All this presented with horrifying clarity of words and firmly encompassed by brutal beats and gloomy melodies.

It might have changed its face and appearance over centuries, but in essence and in its very core 'War Never Changes'. Wherever it appears it only brings chaos, destruction, hate and suffering, regardless of what some people like to claim about it boosting the economy and contributing to progress. Just false pretences to mask the true interests and justify the killings of hundreds of thousands of people! Musically, the song pumps adrenaline through the veins and is even more relentless with the beats than its predecessors, while contrasting the harshness with the sadness indwelling the soundscapes. 'Silent Death' became my favourite on first listen. Without masking anything it reveals the abysms of human doing. How so called doctors use people as lab rats, torturing them, poisoning or burning them and when it comes to taking responsibility they're the first to run away and hide under the wings of governments or escape to other countries. The beats on this track are maimed just as the victims are and the synth layers, sometimes seeming almost optimistic,  appear like purest cynicism to the atrocities stated in the lyrics at times. Strange thing isn't it?

The title track is like a news show, but after consuming it wholly you're just feeling wretched and you instinctively feel there's something going completely wrong with this world, with this system. That realization gets served to you on a silver plate. 'Sturm des Zorns' concludes the album, propelled by an endlessly outstretching web of surging dusk that adds a tactile desolation and leaves you speechless. Those who opted for the limited first edition of the album will be taken on a trip into the past to the time around 1998-2001. The first track 'Piece of Hell 0.3' sees a PAINBASTARD less brutally throwing out beats, rather emphasizing atmospheres and creepy, hissing vocals. The song presumably being the root for the project's name opens with portentous organs, phasing into brooding beats coupled with evil whispers and erupting into unbridled rage once in a while. Smothered sobbing leads is into '23-5-1999', a painful date it seems as the first words "You left me in silence" give away. The ethereal compound of piano and strings soon is displaced by pushing beats of raging desperation.

'Ist nichts mehr, wie es war?' puts me in mind of earlier HOCICO stuff by its entire make-up and fabric. Today's material hardly shows any resemblance to the Mexican duo, except the harshness. The very last song 'Forgive Me' has in stock a clean, melodic delivery for us, putting PAINBASTARD nearer to acts like SOLITARY EXPERIMENTS. Frankly, I was more than surprised. Never expected he was actually doing stuff like that in the past. I could never call myself much of a big PAINBASTARD fan in the past and I wouldn't call myself that today either. Nevertheless, he's got something other bands of the harsher electro genre simply lack: Content! The lyrics actually have a message. They descend from a guy who's looking very attentively at the world surrounding him and 'Kriegserklärung' an album' that is a feast to listen to.


Tracklist

01. Rebellion des Gewissens - 2:38
02. BCM - 5:33
03. Widerstand - 4:50
08. Don't wake me up - 5:37
09. Invisible - 5:30
10. Seek and destroy - 4:47
11. Fuck you all - 3:27
12. Klare Worte - 4:27
13. Sturm des Zorns - 3:49

CD 2 (Kriegspfade 1998-2001) [Ltd.Ed Only]
01. Piece of hell V0.3 - 5:15
02. Painbastard - 7:00
03. Frozen Emotions - 9:30
04. I don`t care (that you hate me) - 4:58
05. What happenend to me - 5:39
06. 23-05-1999 - 4:55
07. Don`t ask me why - 5:36
08. Make them die slowly - 7:11
09. Valley of grief - 6:05
10. Enter (my) new world - 6:26
11. Words of blood - 4:51
13. Damned to suffer (home-session clean version) - 3:44
14. Forgive me - 4:20


Line-Up

Alex P. & Alex K.


Website

http://www.painbastard.de/ / http://www.myspace.com/painbastard


Cover Picture




Rating

Music: 8
Sound: 8
Extras: 7 (Bonus CD)
Total: 7.7 / 10


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