Rating: 9.0
Country: Sweden
Release Date: 2007
Record Label: Total Holocaust Records
Track list:
1. Förspel & Intrång
2. Sweet Illness of Mine
3. I Love (To Hurt) You
4. En Man I Sina Sämsta År
5. Dödens Landsväg
6. Välkommen Till Pulvercity
7. Saltvatten (Du + Jag VS. Tellus)
8. Besatt
9. Höstdepressioner
10. Humörets Bottenvåning
11. Museum of Past Affections
12. Nitlott
Total playing time 52:37
Band Website: Lifelover |
Lifelover - Erotik
( ) - Vocals, Speech, Guitar, Lyrics
B - Vocals, Guitars, Bass, Piano, Speech, Lyrics
LR - Additional Vocals, Speech, Lyrics
1853 - Additional Vocals, Speech, Lyrics
H. - Guitar
At first glance, Lifelover is a bit of an enigma. Members of the orthodox Satanists Ondskapt, the depressive Burzum-worshipping Hypothermia, and the ineptly named misanthropes Dimhymn collaborating on a rock project with clean vocals and hooks? But if you think about it, most Swedish black metal bands are just rock bands who don't want to admit it. Lifelover do admit it, and this candidness is where they succeed.
Lifelover's agenda is depressive, black metal-tinted rock, with a sense of melancholy closer to the likes of Type O Negative than Xasthur or whoever. Katatonia is another obvious influence, while the more metallic bits almost come across like a minimalist Peste Noire draped with light piano clatter. There are scattered elements ranging from 80's new wave and post-punk stuff to even hooky Japanese visual-kei pop (don't worry, there's no sexually frustrated cross-dressing in the band photos; just blood and gas masks), but with an omnipresent experimental edge that opens the gate to bizarre use of backwards looping, samples of random classical music I can't identify, and assorted other whatthefuckeries.
Consider the lyrical and conceptual spectrum of metal. Death metal: "I'm gonna kill you!"; doom metal: "You're a witch, and witches are evil, so I'm gonna burn you (once I overcome my existential angst and/or alcoholism)!"; black metal: "I invoke thee, wintergoats of Mars!" and so forth. While metal is more often than not an escapist affair, Lifelover are simply products of their environment; musicians of the city, a place that's full of life yet hollow, oversexed yet understimulating. Instead of the standard metal attitude of declaring war on all they see as mediocre, Lifelover revel in it, with their urban alienation painfully exposed with music that's almost lunar in its aloofness. However, they scarcely avoid the almost ubiquitous element of self-pity in emotionally charged music by lacing their album with a sardonic sense of irony (note the various samples of Christian children's songs, jovial folk music, and dancing clowns [I guess?]) which pervades even in the band name. Lifelover indeed. For such simple music, Erotik has a surprising degree of emotional dimension, maintaining an ever-blurred line between deeply cynical angst and euphoria. Some of the album's almost comically upbeat moments, complete with handclaps, feel like a sarcastic facade draped over bitter melancholy, while its most depressive bits are, in a way, blissful.
Erotik is a musical progression from the band's previous album, Pulver, in just about every way. First, the axework; Pulver's riffs were by no means weak, often amorphously slithering out of their blissful pop masks and into doom lurches and black metal tremolo bits, but glitchy drone filler, a somewhat neutered guitar tone, and tasteless sample abuse seemed to distract the band's attention from them, as well as eclipse the album's potential replayability. Those riffs are finally the focal point here, while the leadwork is much more organic, often bringing to mind Iron Maiden's melodicism streaked with vertigo-inducing tints of psychedelia in its ethereal contrast to the rhythm section. Listen to that air-raid siren of a lead in "En Man I Sina Sämsta År" and you'll see what I mean. And from the minor key embellishments drifting between dreary strings in "Förspel & Intrång" to the techno beat undercurrent throbbing beneath the dreamy pop of "Humörets Bottenvåning," the small amount of filler that does occupy Erotik is interesting enough that you won't find yourself skipping it every time after your first spin.
Erotik sees Kim (or his pseudonym "( )" -- because the best names are unpronounceable and vaguely resemble crude depictions of female genitalia) relinquishing his demented leadman status with vocal duties equally distributed among the band. The first time we even hear his disembodied wail on this album is in the sixth song, "Välkommen Till Pulvercity." Nattdal (or "B") alternates between the throaty black metal rasps heard in Dimhymn and a melancholic baritone, sometimes attempting to sing in English. The result is sort of hit-and-miss; his strong Swedish accent renders him mumbly and sub-comprehensible, as if he's trying to lace phonetics that are foreign to him through a vocal line he already had in mind. But he's still endearing, and the English lyrics, while uneloquent, do manage to strike a cord. "Not even all the world's whores can satisfy me anymore." The rest of the band's communal vocal contribution is suitably bizarre, ranging from death metal howls to somber recitative narration.
I pretty much share everyone else's opinion regarding drum machines, in that I think they're shit. In fact, if there was an anti-drum machine mafia, I'd probably be the fearless leader, or at least some sort of elite lieutenant. But in all honesty, Erotik's drum programming is pretty effective in a rigid Godflesh sort of way, abusing the cymbal sounds to the extent you never forget that Lifelover's roots rest in black metal. But still, guys, you have five members; get one of them to drum. Some of the key changes in the piano counterpoints are also still a bit too mechanical and abrupt, but technical imperfections aside, the piano is fortunately much more fundamental to the music than in the last album; near the end of the song "Besatt," for example, the guitars are subdued to a sort of indie rock jangle, while the in rilievo key presence is the principle rhythmic voice. This kind of attention to their craft is what separates Lifelover from countless other imbeciles in masks.
Once again, one of the most interesting modern voices in black metal isn't even black metal. What that says about the genre is unfortunate, but if you're looking for something different, you could do worse than to check out this intangible tapestry of fucked up outsider rock.
February 25th, 2008
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