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
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.
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
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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