I’m A Firestarter, Twisted Firestarter!
A rather heated and robust debate begins this record, your stomach starts doing somersaults, you know what is about to unfold and you can’t stop it. Hold onto your vitals my friends as our industrial metal heroes Combichrist have arrived with a lesson in instigation, aggression and agitation at all things connected to living.
Anger, fear, frustration are amongst the emotions that are tested to their limits, the pot is boiling over and no one is there to hold back the incoming ferocious and fierce flood. We may as well sit back and let the scalding liquid consume us.
‘Hate Like Me’ opens the show and you get a little Rammstein, a little Deathstars in the voice department, and aiming straight for the jugular.
‘We are statistics’ and ‘put your fist up if you are broken’ – well both of mine are up Mr LaPlegua.
Burton C. Bell from our friends Fear Factory makes an appearance and we ‘bite the hand that bleeds’ gather around the table folks for a splatter platter of death growls, it’s time to eat!
There is only ‘One Fire’ so I’ll let you ‘come and burn with me’.
My favourite is the Nick Cave( sigh….) driven ‘Bottle Of Pain’ with its ‘ I’ve got this bottle of pain, I got murder on my brain’ bedecked with vocals that have been rubbed down with sandpaper.
Get your crystal balls out ducklings with a glimpse into ‘2045’. Will there be Freddos? Probably, but at £45 a throw. Set to a wartime television advertisement style we contemplate where we are all headed.
Even in the ‘Interlude’ there is no respite as we are faced with ‘a serpent’s tongue that’s as sharp as a knife’
A hit- the- spot Dead Kennedys cover ( Jello Biafra, oh my….) complements this album, sitting prettily amongst the hate and anger.
The heavy, heavy footfalls of ‘The Other’ lead us gently over the finish line and we wonder if things have been resolved satisfactorily. Maybe, but our friends here have definitely given us something to think about.
Come inside, don’t be late, if it’s all the same to you.
Combichrist – One Fire out now via Out Of Line Music