Review:'Bloodjoy, Rhys' 'Run From The Hunter / Celebration'
- Genre: 'Industrial'
Our Rating:
AA-side single ‘Run From The Hunter / Celebration’ is lifted from the upcoming debut album by Rhys Bloodjoy. He may sound like a fictional character from a sitcom about a Welsh axe-murderer, but Rhys is a hotly-tipped purveyor of post-punk cold wave with a psychedelic twist. The album, Human.Pattern.Repeat. follows a brace of sold-out EPs.
On the strength of this offering, it’s not hard to hear the appeal, niche as it may be. Ever since Nine Inch Nails blasted the gates open for brutally harsh electronics with Broken, Fixed, and The Downward Spiral, the musical landscape has been more receptive do dark and abrasive sounds. I cite this as the watershed over Ministry’s Psalm 69 because Ministry were already established on the scene and the album bore a clear alignment to metal tropes, whereas NIN did something different and broke new ground. And it’s NIN that provide the more obvious influential linearity here.
‘Run From The Hunter’ is all synthy goth but with a snarly, gnarly edge to it. You might call it industrial, but bore down deeper into what that actually translates as, and what it boils down to is a blend of angst and aggression, as articulated through the medium of music. With hefty pseudo-tribal percussion and an undulating synth grind providing the main backdrop to a growling gravelly vocal that’s a bit Till Lindemann, a bit Raymond Watts, and a lot doomily bombastic, it’s an evocation of primitivism filtered through a postindustrial / postcapitalism society viewer and it all makes sense. Chuck in a load of extraneous noise and it’s an absolute winner.
‘Celebration’ is a nagging, insistent affair, that renders the Nine Inch Nails influence most apparent. But it’s also so more, despite its stark simplicity: murky pulsations and endless echo crash it in somewhere between Suicide and The Cramps, with hints of early Cabaret Voltaire. It nag, nag, nags and stomps away, gnawing at the senses and the cerebellum, while also battering the body with its insistent beat and sawing synthesizer groove.
