REVIEW: Tattoo of Pain, Vengeance is Mine (Antler/Subway)
- Krisjanis Gale
I would have expected much better from Praga Khan and Oliver Adams, who produced such great work with Lords of Acid, as well as Digital Orgasm, Channel X, and The Immortals, and who've also produced and remixed Alice in Chains, White Zombie, and Gravity Kills. Perhaps they've spent such a lengthy amount of time in the industry they can no longer see the forest from the trees; this album tries too hard to do too little. It is, sadly, formulaic.
Anyone can be Tattoo of Pain. They need only follow this recipe: introduce some totally random synthetic sequence of odd sound and vocal samples that only bear a passing resemblance to what your song is trying to say; rip to shreds whatever ambiance that had just built up in your intro with a premature explosion of deeply distorted lead guitar, backed by an overpowering and painfully simple drum sequence; continue slipping random vocal samples into your song, which is now effortlessly looping with the sort of utter redundancy that sells so well nowadays; layer atop this mess some cheesy apocalyptic lyrics, just too quiet to hear; repeat until you've reached that standard five minute mark; and top it all off with an abrubt ending, containing the musical artistry you really meant to put in your song, loop for about ten seconds more, then stop. Important preparation note: use only three notes to compose your "music."
Don't get me wrong, there are little glimpses of brilliance here. But they're consistently and quickly destroyed by some deep-seated need to appeal to a listening audience who now love that the likes of Ministry have gone Metal, and forgotten all about their Industrial roots, retreating into the indistinguishable ocean of guitar rock.
