Back in early 2014, I doled out a pretty unforgiving review of God Module’s ‘False Face’. It’s an album which, on the face of things (pardon the not-really-a-pun) I should have liked. After all, I have a substantial collection of late 80s and early 90s Wax Trax! LPs and 12” singles in my collection, having spent many hours in the early 90s at record fairs, raiding the techno / industrial / alternative sections and picking up records by the likes of KMFDM, Pig, Acid Horse amongst others. Revco, Ministry.
Maybe I was in a bad mood, and I need to revisit it. Or maybe not. ‘Prophecy’ is housed in what seems to be a typically (and gratuitously) unpleasant cover, principally concerned with shock rather than message or meaning. Musically, it’s of its type. Heavily processed, robotix vox sneer and snarl about how fucked society is, and do on and so forth. So far, so staple.
Sonically, it’s pretty taut, and flamboyant orchestral strikes aside, this is where the album has definite merit. The overall vibe is pretty bleak, the grinding technoindustrial beats and throbbing basslines providing the spine to some pretty stark, post-apocalyptic tracks.
I can’t help but think of The Sisterhood album, ‘Gift’, the product of Andrew Eldritch’s fallout with Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams in 1986, and Ministry’s ‘Twitch’ (also 1986). Both great and groundbreaking albums in their own right, my problem with ‘Prophecy’ – a title which suggests intimations of future events – is that it sounds so very like albums released some 30 years ago.
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Still, if the plodding sub-Rammestein-meets KMDM ‘Endless’ sounds horribly predictable, and the electro-trance of ‘Abduction’ sounds like some bad 90s rave done in an electrogoth style, the pulsating mechanoid grind of ‘Secrets’ is hypnotic and heavy-duty, and ‘We Are Legend’ – which leans heavily on New Order’s ‘Temptation’ (some may say ripping off, but I’d like to believe this is more of an homage) – is a thumping piece of Dalek disco.
It would be hard to hail an album so steeped in the past for its innovation, but in context, it’s pretty solid and packs enough tunes to make it worthwhile.
God Module Online
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