Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Werefox
Label: Moonlee Records
Release: 2016
Length: 39:33
Rating: 4/5
Werefox, a band that hasn’t been around long but is remarkably seasoned in terms of experience, a four-piece of musicians from Prekmurje, keep following the path laid out by their studio debut »I Am Memory«, released three years ago. The new album »Das Leid der Maschinen« evolves, deepens and expands the musical direction set on the debut while nurturing it at the same time. That debut was a one-of-a-kind picture book of alternative rock vistas, and in many ways a sonic and stylistic melting pot of the band members’ earlier musical projects, led by Psycho-Path, Sphericube and Manul.
“Das Lied der Maschinen” is a polished musical achievement with real artistic intelligence, where a rich message and the musical arrangements stay locked in a superb, clearly audible dialogue of incredibly fitting complementarity. The album sows bleak, post-apocalyptic visions of the future, where pretty much all the emotional and spiritual intelligence of a morally plundered humanity has been poured into machines. In the human’s total alienation from nature, the machines spring to life in his place, while the human individual sinks into a software-driven shell with no color, smell or taste. The whole story the lyrics unfold comes across as downright chilling in all its bizarreness. With a little imagination, you can find in such visions more than one meaningful parallel to the reality we live in today (and wrongly celebrate). Dystopian, even Orwellian, a cleverly packaged socially critical streak runs through this record. Imagine that someday, in some not-so-distant future of global groupthink, Big Brother declares that feeling and spirituality are a sickness of the individual that urgently needs treating (hunted down with fire and sword)?
The atmosphere of the album is cold, alienated, dehumanized. The female vocal is strictly authoritative, rigidly disciplined through deliberately repetitive, hammered-home verses, if not downright overly concise, yet at every point on the album she’s deep in the thing when it comes to bringing the lyrics to life. Her approach and the color of her voice also share something in common with the vocals of The Cranberries. At times positively phantom-like, even »extraterrestrially entranced«, Meleé’s vocal performance is one of the central magnets of this album’s image. The high musicality that her vocals generate is often caught in a fierce alternative rock primacy of avalanche-like guitar phrases (there may be a few »interjections« that smell of stoner rock), while in the more sophisticated parts the guitars masterfully, minimalistically slink into the background, creating new soundscapes that »caress« the vocals. The rhythmic kinetics are contrasting in the sound picture too: the simple but firmly nailed rhythms deliver, through the album’s short, punchy yet supple moves and arrangement steps, even a bit of danceability, or pop sentiment.
With this album, Werefox throw the doors wide open to compete effectively on the international scene. Why? The band’s ace in the hole is its strong artistic definition and excellent production. The quartet’s artistic vision is clear and recognizable. Alongside the excellent, predatory-alive production, which is fashionably reverb-soaked and dark in atmosphere, the sonic aesthetic of this record also evokes a mystical, faraway gaze, strengthened by the typical geographic imprint of melancholy, of mists »soaked up« into the record from the Prekmurje plains. So it’s not hard to make out the clearly defined musical vision of artistic singularity and the band’s unique authorial identity, which the new album effectively spreads and deepens.
“Das Lied der Maschinen” suddenly grabs the listener and awakens a vivid landscape of manifold moods, passions and emotions. It’s a record of filigree-measured strokes of sonic minimalism that create a rich structure of arranged songs. The very framework of the songs leaves room for several directions of artistic maturing and evolution down the road. One such possible vision of further artistic evolution is, for example, a bit of flirting with electronics and industrial sounds. So let’s keep letting ourselves be pleasantly surprised in the future too. Werefox are a story that, after an excellent debut, comes back with a new album that’s artistically even more mature and, in what it has to say, even bolder and more defined. And as said: a band ready to conquer the international music scene. This time, let the machines play and sing for you.
Line-up
Melanija Fabčič – Meleé – vocals
Sašo Benko – Bekko – guitar, backing vocals
Manuel Hahn – bass guitar, baritone guitar, backing vocals
David Halb – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Hannes Jaeckl – guitar, keyboards
Mojca Krevel – additional vocals
Dominik Bagola – keyboards, xylophone, percussion
Production
Hannes Jaeckl
Tracklist
1. Orange Red
2. Triads
3. Storm Stay Out
4. Magic Man
5. I Wanna Swim
6. Holy Rage
7. Omnisentient
8. Divination
9. Radical C
