Released
1999

Label
Metropolis

Reviewed by
S. Glitsos

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Crocodile Shop

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Last Edit/Update
02 October, 1999

Crocodile Shop

Everything is Dead and Gone

Track Listing

1. useless
2. trackovtime
3. core
4. getogether
5. martyr
6. passion
7. one_way_out
8. hostages
9. ghettology
10. claim
11. fault
12. expect
13. thirteen

    If any CD has ever taken me by surprise, I think this is it. I expected a Skinny Puppy/Front Line Assembly clone, typical of the type of music you'd find labeled "industrial" at the moment. What I got was something that appealed to me in Skinny Puppy's audio sculpturing: implemented noise. Granted, I would much rather listen to Skinny Puppy, hearing it in other situations is a relief. A fair amount of the songs are dancefloor oriented, but there's a fair amount of variation. If you're in a synthpop mood, check out "fault." If you're in an Indian music mood (whatever that is), check out the sitar in the rather inappropriately named "ghettology."
    Mostly, however, you're going to find good 'ole noisey industrial. But at least the vocal samples aren't mind numbingly stupid. Pretty much the only thing I did find mind numbing was that almost every song had a noisey intro and a noisey outro. This yielded some of the better sounding material on the CD, but structurally and creatively, it may as well have been New Kids on the Block.

    This release starts out VERY strongly with "useless." To make another Skinny Puppy reference (Can you really have enough of them?), it reminded me at times of cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel's work in Doubting Thomas. It would have been a lot better if the vocals weren't present. Sadly, that could be said for most of the CD -- the vocals aren't terribly moving and don't have that important sounding of a message. While the lyrics are definitely above the level of Bill Leeb (I pray that his high school English teacher didn't hemhorrage from his poetry), it certainly isn't the calibur of such poets as Edward Ka-Spel, or even Dr. Seuss. At most, it adds another texture to the music. "trackovtime" was a strong followup to a nice start, and the third track, "core," came off as sounding like Tactical Neural Implant-era FLA in a modern recording setup. "getogether" is one for the noise collage fans, but the CD started losing momentum around track 5, "martyr." Too awkward, too repetative. This follows in track eight (which actually sounds like a B-side from the new FLA album), all the way to "expect," another strong track: interesting drum programming and gritty insectoid distortion -- num num!

By far, and I mean by light years, the most interesting song on this CD is the final track: the aptly named "thirteen." Perhaps the most well constructed song on the CD (and an instrumental to boot), it starts with a mess of vocal samples (mostly of a man talking in a foreign language). Eventually the percussion starts, a nice bass synth with a weird clickity on it (I think it may have been meant to emulate an old electronic piano, but I'm not sure). Everything fits. It's great -- and to top it off, there's a six minute or so collage-like outro. It sounds sort of like an improv session to me -- which is fantastic. It's always nice to hear artists having fun in the studio.