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BATTERY 9 - Sondebok
Even though there has been a few live line-up changes over the last few
years (in guitar and live drum departments with Battery
9 godfather also playing bass), the recording
core and creative driving force of this stalwart South African project
remains that of Mr. Paul Riekert.
While moving into a new era, the Battery
9 hallmarks are still there with it's
borderline industrial dance flavour and the muffled & distorted guitar
riffs, thumping beats & pulses and (mostly) distorted vocals. The emphasis
is still firmly on the Afrikaans language with only about a third of the
material venturing into Anglicized realms. It maintains its delving into
the darker side of things with a predominant hard dance ethic behind its
varied pages, each revealing something else as you turn it over - Be it
a disturbed psyche, Afrikaans Rap, an encounter with the devil or a sense
of humour (the latter three all to be found in Iets Om Te Blameer
with live painter Huyser
on vocals). The expected electric guitar stabs get a surprising acoustic
alternate while loops form the base of several of the 14 tracks on this,
their first major label release (recently signed to Gallo SA). EBM traces
can be found while the Battery 9
version of a ballad come in the shape of the slow drifting number, Kudu
Salad, it's closing track Skryf Dikwels Hoor also projecting
a sad, somber but relieved tone. A rip-off Afrikaner Blues lament is set
to a slow cheap organ waltz with a drinking song chourus slapped onto
it, aptly named Kakstraat. In some of the overwhelming electronically
created songs Industrial dance acts like Klute
come to mind, but in the end it's still very-very "Battery 9".
4 / B
- PB
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