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The Sword Volcano Complex is a project that revolves around Bruce LaFountain. He has gathered some familiar names around him from the English industrial scene, such as John Murphy, who takes care of vocals and percussion on many of these tracks, and Karl Blake, who also lends his voice to the project. This collection of tracks is extremely varied, but mostly of an electronic nature, often mixed with spoken word by the various vocalists.
The tracks vary a lot in intensity, and to me this gives the album a quite chaotic and incoherent feel, which doesn't support the listening experience. Nevertheless, the individual tracks are generally well-crafted and interesting. It's best to give a few separate impressions of things that stood out. The title track is a scintillating instrumental track that highlights the typical electronic style of this project. "Knocking on Heaven's Door" (no, it's not a cover) is a very good piece of meditative ambient (bowls and chimes) with manipulated vocals. "Spindogspin" features a quite conventional electro beat, with some less conventional sounds in the background. It's tracks like this one that break the flow of the album a little too much, in my opinion. "Hercules 2" takes things back into the experimental territory that is the strong side of this project: weird sounds and effects to create an unconventional sound. Near the end, we get "Hypnotized", a live recording also based on an electronic beat, with powerful vocals by Bruce himself.
So, there are quite a few tracks on this album that contain interesting elements, but in general, I feel the album lacks some focus. There's a lot of potential in what's going on here, but presented like this, it's like a blast of grapeshot - many chances to hit something, but never with full force. In short, an interesting album from a project you should keep in mind if you are into experimental electronics coming from the scene that brought forth things like Coil and Nurse With Wound, but with a lot of unrealised potential. Perhaps the upcoming album will present an improvement?
O.S.
The tracks vary a lot in intensity, and to me this gives the album a quite chaotic and incoherent feel, which doesn't support the listening experience. Nevertheless, the individual tracks are generally well-crafted and interesting. It's best to give a few separate impressions of things that stood out. The title track is a scintillating instrumental track that highlights the typical electronic style of this project. "Knocking on Heaven's Door" (no, it's not a cover) is a very good piece of meditative ambient (bowls and chimes) with manipulated vocals. "Spindogspin" features a quite conventional electro beat, with some less conventional sounds in the background. It's tracks like this one that break the flow of the album a little too much, in my opinion. "Hercules 2" takes things back into the experimental territory that is the strong side of this project: weird sounds and effects to create an unconventional sound. Near the end, we get "Hypnotized", a live recording also based on an electronic beat, with powerful vocals by Bruce himself.
So, there are quite a few tracks on this album that contain interesting elements, but in general, I feel the album lacks some focus. There's a lot of potential in what's going on here, but presented like this, it's like a blast of grapeshot - many chances to hit something, but never with full force. In short, an interesting album from a project you should keep in mind if you are into experimental electronics coming from the scene that brought forth things like Coil and Nurse With Wound, but with a lot of unrealised potential. Perhaps the upcoming album will present an improvement?
O.S.