List | S | Scapa Flow | 'Heads Off To Freedom' CD 1994

Track:	Name:	Time:
1.	Intro	0:22
2.	Mudhead	3:38
3.	Shell Of Sanity	4:01
4.	Seasick	5:13
5.	Shirshasana	5:31
6.	Faith: The Only Anchor	4:06
7.	Morbid Games	4:28
8.	Leo	7:38
9.	Let The Sleeping Mummies Lie	5:26
	Total	40:30

Comments:

With their excellent debut album in mind (not counting the mini-LP 'The Guide'), I was quite anxious to hear more from this band. So how is it?

The first track (skipping the noisy intro) is quite rocky, a rough and quite heavy tune with a great flanged bassline, sounding a bit like a modernised version of the sound off Chased By Sunset. There's some occasional dist guitar as well, but not too much.

Following that is an excellent track with even more "go" than the previous, the true "hit" of the album. A bit rough EBM-ish, with a style of their own. Track three is also very strong, and perhaps a bit more melodic and slightly goth-sounding. It ends with some acoustic guitar, reminding me a bit of the Kangaroo remix.

After that, the next track is a lot more funky, with a hip-hop style drum beat and some 'industrial' noisy FX. The vocals are shouted/"rapped" in the verse, and sung in the melodic chorus. Apart from a slightly embarrassing "rap" part in the middle (by someone else than the regular singer, I think), it's a quite good track. Noisy. Funky. Heavy. Growling. And with some more of those brilliant flanged synth basslines. It ends with a looped sample of someone shouting "motherfucker" (or, more precisely, only the "-fucker" part is looped), which fades out and then in again and brings us to the next song. While also being quite strong, it's less crammed with sound and more slow and melodic. I can't say why exactly, but it somehow reminds me a bit of the later works of A Split-Second.

Back to the funky stuff with the next track, with more of those slightly embarrassing "rap" parts in between the sung vocals. Not counting that, it's quite a good slower funky track, but certain things about it (the "rap", the sampled Flavour Flav "Come on!" shout) makes me think it's a bit of a joke. Not as flipped as Dancing King, but parts of this track are roughly in the same territory. I tend to skip this track, though. I guess I'm put off by the growling "rap".

I like the following track a whole lot more. It's slow and funky, but more relaxed and jazzy, reminding me a bit of what Portishead would come up with some time later. The vocals aren't female though (as with Portishead), but whispered male vocals that breaks into a great melodic sung chorus. An aggro-synth jazz ballad? Parts of the chorus remind me a little bit of Mutilate, which Front 242 released the previous year. The klinky piano breaks any 242 references, though. Come to think of it, the verse is a bit like Serial Killers Don't Kill Their Girlfriend from the other 242 album that year. I suppose alll this is unintentional, but it's a nice mix of genres, resulting in a slow and melodic ballad-type track which I've really come to like.

Back to the stomping semi-EBM with the last track; a melodic and quite rockish track is left to finish off the album. It's much in the style of the first few tracks of the album, and quite good.

As an album, it's more well-produced than Chased By Sunset, more aggro and 'EBM/industrial'-ish. There are less of those fantastically wonderful chords, but you can still hear them here and there, albeit lower in the mix. Speaking of which, the mixing is less sparse and minimalistic, which means there are more sounds and layers. It also has more of a real album feel than its predecessor, but I suppose that's something that comes with time. The synths are more analogue sounding, which is good in a way, but the cold synths of the first album were also feling very 'right'. In short, another good album, but perhaps not entirely as excellent as the previous. More real songs though.

Home