2002-09-15
PURGE is Holy Cow's fourth album, following CALL IT WHAT YOU WILL and
SUGGESTED READING and SOUL BOX (a collection of B-sides and re-mixes), all
produced by Head Chunk Records. If you're fond of the earlier albums -- I
am -- you'll find PURGE especially compelling. It's darker and stranger,
more upbeat throughout, and, as ever, glowing with sharp subtle
Morrissey-smart lyrics.
A great feature of the album is its ranging diversity. From the menacing
demented goth-industrial space funk of "Dig" to the more straightforward
industrial "Outsider" and "Two Women" to the skewed blues of "St. James
Infirmary" and the Middle Eastern strains of "Random" (replete with
synthetic sitar, dazzling Spanish acoustic guitar and eerie sampled holy
wails) we have quite a platter. It's wonderful, surprising--and refreshing,
given the number of bands out there who seem to repeat the same song again
and again on a disc, with minute variations.
"Nub of Flesh" has a decidedly Mission UK feel about it, even if it's more
brooding, contagiously rhythmic, hypnotically laced with mandolin, with a
backdrop mesh of strange lovely sampled voices and sounds. It's a
fantastic song. You hear it, you can't help but replay it; it stays in
your head. Equally fine is "St. James Infirmary, a ballad of sorts which
begins as necrophilic love meditation (a man visits his "baby" stretched on
a "white table" at the infirmary) and evolves into a grand dark fantasy on
his own death, on how much style he himself will go out with. The guitar
work by Manuel Silva is especially fine on this piece.
What holds PURGE together, for all its daring variability, is the insistent
presence of the synth and synth-altered guitar, as well as Chris Means'
charismatic, dramatic vocals; one senses that the show would be astonishing
live. Means sounds like a darker, more existential, less melodic
Voltaire-not the French author but the goth singer (who is himself a
cabaret version of Human Drama's Johnny Indovina). The lyrics are intense
and memorable, and Means' delivery can knock you to pieces. Even the
hardest songs on the album are tempered by lyrical vocals, and
unforgettable lyrics -- as in "Dance of Torture," with its vibrant sampled
refrain, "I am someone!" PURGE offers that humane note we hope for in
goth, and in gothic industrial, so often lacking in harder industrial and
metal. It's a note that insists we keep an eye on this band.
Kirk Nesset
