Hydra is the latest album by Whole, who are not just covering Within Temptations classic album of the same name, neither are they anything to do with Whole the Toto tribute band, so don't have a fake Simon Phillips drumming for them. Instead they are creators of a dark EBM synth pop album.
Whole are a duo comprising Berliners Thomas Schernikau from Forced To Mode and Forced Movement alongside Alexander Leonard Donat from Vlimmer, Fir Cone Children and Assasun. With cover art that immediately reminded me of The Sun Ra All Stars Band's Hiroshima album that uses a painting by John Martin called The Great Day Of His Wrath.
The album opens with the tribal drum intro to Beast that has foreboding keyboards, making this feel dark before the vocals that are sweeter than the music, having a nice synth pop feel to them, trying to escape from the Beast who is not the same one the Only Ones were trying to escape from.
Sudden Hydra is rather gentle synth pop, with a Drum & Bass rhythm that suddenly explodes, like that Hydra breaking through the walls and engulfing everything, synths have echoes of OMD meets Blancmange as dread rises.
Ten Commandments quite understandable urges many of our so-called leaders to follow them more closely, this song claims the protagonists will wash there hands in boiling blood for the sins they commit, during this dark industrial EBM pop song with hints towards Depeche Mode.
Dead Deer has a central chanted vocal counterbalanced with the darker vocal chorus, woven around rollercoaster ride of synth pop, rising and falling going proper dancefloor stomp, battling on Front 242 against the 808 State.
Valson has sci-fi synth edged gloom pop for dark days in deep wells of decay, beauty sweeps through Torch Song bright.
I Am Your Shadow and I'm pulsing in the darkness, throwing ideas around ripping out our hearts, find ways to be constructive in destructive times, creating their own realities. Inventing new fluxes, clouds storm around our heads in dry ice like swirls pumped from atop a nightclub speaker stack.
Floodmarker is a tune for the sort of year 2024 has been so far, with twice as much rain as usual, looking at historic flood markers wondering if they will need remarking, the dark distress for the lives we live in flooded times, the inevitable marching beat towards the doom of the onrushing flood.
Rip another paper off, roll another one, take a drag on that smoke and the twitchy glitchy handclap rhythm machine backing leads off into that perfect storm in bass from 80's Brooklyn.
Flagstone is uneven cracked beats, disjointed time changing synths, with gauze pop vocals building a patio by Alexanderplatz, coming down slowly the fear never leaving, how can it, sirens of destruction call towards us.
The album closes with Morricone a slow dark tale, not about fabulous disco soundtracks, but the apocalyptic mess of dystopian times with no clear path to a more hopeful future, bleak swirling synths try to ease the existential angst as we have gone too far.
Find Out more at https://www.facebook.com/WHOLEband https://blackjackilluministrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hydra?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3x39T5EDlD4r3c3uNTg5k-MJxRDZsnOn5JwVxg2h06P3rzeASyLZTWowo_aem_TfrAqf3GKneRuzMHdfWEiw
