Album review : KMFDM – Let Go
Metropolis Records [Release date : 02.02.24]
KMFDM’s 23rd album is a mixed bag of sights and sounds, each one contributing to a predominant image of a patchwork musical quilt. Each track is an auditory outcry, all cleverly stitched together in a familiar pattern.
Arguably, it’s a simplification of the band’s NDH tendencies, with the title and opening track, Let Go, setting the scene.
It pares down the band’s sound to a loud and relentless rhythmic pulse, underlining founding member, Sascha Konietsko’s simple, visceral message.
Lucia Cifarelli’s half spoken, half sung vocals add an electric, and electrifying sensuality to ‘Touch’s new wave keys and rhythms. With ‘Let Go’, these two tracks are perhaps the closest to the mainstream as we might expect the band to get.
The spoken word intro to ‘Push’ is lifted from a viral video of a hiker being stalked by a mountain lion in Utah. You can hear the rising panic in his voice, despite his assurances. It’s a metaphor for something too obscure to see clearly, with grinding industrial metal guitars, and a thumping, percussive rhythmic figure pushing it hard from one line of lyrics to the next.
No need for metaphors on ‘Turn The Light On’. Its funky, slamming beats underline Konietsko’s barbed lyrics, accusing western msm of being no more than a high functioning propaganda service.
Cifarelli adds dark humour, concluding that we should “hang ‘em high with their pants on fire”. Indeed.
And then there’s the trippy melodic rock of early single teaser, ‘Airhead’, a slow motion resurrection of AOR, with the punky attitood of the late great Runaways.
Elsewhere, the sweet, smooth processed vocal sounds of ‘Next Move’ resonate with cool blasts of heavy metal guitars, reminiscent of T-Ride’s ‘Backdoor Romeo’, “descent with with inherited modification” is the term, perhaps.
Clinging onto the commercial edges of the genre, ‘Erlkonig’ is a Frankenstein’s Monster of NDH. Heavily rhythmic, accessible, pacey, It’s Rammstein light, or Stahlmann heavy. With a memorable melody.
Maybe KMFDM are getting soft now? Perhaps not. ****
Review by Brian McGowan
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