Scarred

Misery

You Ruined Everything

Unknown

You Don`t Mean That Much

One Of Us

Blasphemy

Fear Me

Spray

Problem

 

 



Rob Holliday - vocals and guitar


Monti - drums and programming


Mud - live bass



SULPHER: "Spray"                   sulpher           
Review by dalia "gryphon_spirit" di giacomo____ 
The new revelation from United Kingdom , from the   famous venues like Camden's Underworld, the new revelation from M'Era Luna Festival - edition 2002, the new revelation from the Industrial Metal  So just in one word: the revelation. Sulpher. And the new stars are becoming more and more popular in the continent thanks to the fact that they are supporting The 69 Eyes in the current tour.

But how were able Sulpher to burst into the scene in such in a quick and successful way? Reading some bios, listening to their music and watching  their pics i come rather soon to the conclusion that the reasons are to be recognized in two basilar points: 1) their music is a clever  mixture of all that in field gothic/electro/industrial can be mixed 2)  singer and guitarist Rob Holliday  is a very handsome boy that surely can hold in a valuable way a live gig.  3) Sulpher are again clever producers with the right sixth sense.  Good music given in the hands of a good looking band featuring many NIN characteristics and producer ability? yes,  and voilà les jeux sont fait! 

Anyway let's try to leave any other consideration in order to concentrate our minds on the music of those who are called the salvation of the (English) Industrial music : the band around frontman Rob Holliday has  been indeed recently  crowned the "Best British Industrial Metal Band". Supposing that there is something to save,  let's see how. Sulpher's music is indeed interesting because can offer dark atmospheres, heavy crunchy guitars but also synth attacks, violent moments, a cyber-like background, electro-effects, but also a touch of romanticism, unusual "noises", a sensual aggressiveness and pain, with a large crossover range. There are many NIN and Stabbing Westward influences, with some Fear Factory flavours, but, at the end of story, everything is well mixed so that the result is fresh and rather exciting , also because this music is stressed by slow, whispered moments, alternated with angry speed attacks powered by heavy drums, like in Scarred, ruled by the lyrics "I'm so fucking scared, I'm so fucking scared of you, are you scared of me too?". Other  positive characteristics are the great work made by the bass tones, extremely powerful in every song, and the  capacity to modulate and to mutate the sounds. Anyway i don't find that all tracks proposed are so cool, many of them are indeed repetitive, accordingly to the law: -once found the winning formula, well ok let's go on with it- and let's compose a lot of clone-tracks. Vocals can pass from whispers to angry shouts , but i don't like at all that "filter" effect sometimes applied in order to make the voice  less clear, giving to it a mechanical cold rough shadow: this  is really annoying me. But it's a matter of taste.

One of the tracks i prefer in Spray is Misery ,  a little bit  repetitive,  based on mid-tempo and very much hypnotic, but catchy and persuading, with cool loops.  . While You ruined Everything has a higher dynamic level with  tempos  that somehow let me remember PL's "sell it to the world".  Incredible bass tones for Unknown, a kind of fusion between scarred and you ruined everything: it  is  a song  that i like enough anyway , but that indeed doesn' t deviate so much from the general texture.  After a short  acoustic and sad beginning ,  You don't mean that much goes  on in a very slow electric tension which hardly explodes and never completely, like the whole song would be put in chains, so that the emotivity can increase. One of us is surely the most representative track of the whole album  , and not by chance becomes  well known. It is melodic, heavy , angry , dark. Blasphemy is a song in which the typical industrial components in sound and rhythm are extremely stressed, same for  Fear me which shows anyway   better   pushing rhythms and loops.  Spray is very short , speed , repetitive., practically one cannot call it a proper song. And finally Problem which  is the track i prefer the most , impressive, atmospheric, metropolitan and cosmic in the same time, excellent mid tempo, with perfect techno arrangments, enthralling rhythm.

Spray on the whole is not, in my opinion,  a bad Debut album, also because Sulpher have anyway a good experience on their shoulders, featuring ex-  members (Holliday- Monti) of Curve and The Creatures, who have worked also together with Gary Numan . Supported by a good mastering, Spray is  in my opinion nothing  transcendental and innovative, nevertheless fresh modern oriented, worth to be purchased, but only under one condition: you should find attractive Sulpher's electro/industrial , almost techno-metal music and not  the singer. (Anyway nothing for death/heavy/trash/black metallers and i have some perplexities about Rammstein's fans too) . Worth to be mentioned :  the sleeve design  is simple, modern but not banal . 

rating: 8/10

dalia di giacomo 


31.08.2003
Review by Sara "Shadow Lady" De Vita____ 

A true revelation indeed for me!!!

At last an exalting album comes in my hands. Sampled sounds, whispered voices that alternate with aggressive and screams in crescendo. A mix between the most electronic gothic and the most refined nu metal!

A perfect blend of sonorities that allow for a very good hope towards an exponential evolution. The album opens with “Scarred”, a yelled,  haunting song with extreme guitars and a powerful and compact drumming that creates a sound wall against which the sampled sounds crash. Sensual and alluring is “Misery” that in some parts fades towards a hypnotic sound with smooth and round guitars and bass, creating spirals of sound. We rise from the soft bed built by this song for us, to sink deeply into “You Ruined Everything”. Ferocious and tireless, with very tight guitars, interposed by a mid-time, that barely leave a moment in order to breath again (…too bad the song fades out…).

Let’s move to “Unknown  …Oh my gods!!! …guys this album is really a masterpiece of sounds: even in this song we find the right mix between speed and sudden slow downs…overall a sort of duel between these two musical components that the Sulpher manage to tame with their technique and inventiveness! We found ourselves gasping for breath in “You Don’t Mean That Much”. Alluring as the dance of a woman (at last this is the image it creates in my mind). Seductive whispers that seem to play for the rest of the band: silent instruments that counterpoint to a master’s interpretation. Only in the last instants the song almost wakes up with a great impact!!!

In “One Of Us” Monti’s samples master the scene creating a rich background to the voice that modulates finely melting into a musical chaos of guitars with sharp and painful riffs sometimes stopped and a fierce, aggressive cadenced drum.

Very close to these last two songs we can towards focusing on “Blasphemy” and “Fear Me” that however, are still rich of very personal flashes.

Short but intense is “Spray”, a little more than a minute, almost becoming an intro to “Problem”, song that is the lift off of the album. This song, anxious and claustrophobic, looks like a very good one, with stout and heavy riffs that break a bit the overall sound standard shown until now in the album, thus lighting up fully the polyhedric abilities of this band.

Sara De Vita  

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