As I was dabbling with industrial music in the 90’s, I was starting to get exposed to dance music without realising it. Acts like Pop Will Eat Itself and Sheep on Drugs were using beats and guitars but still had a dark side. I could fool myself that this wasn’t dance music, because that dance stuff was rubbish. (And to be honest, all I had been exposed to at that point was chart dance, I still say 99% of that was rubbish.) I could hear the potential of something like Their Law (By the Prodigy and PWEI) but it just didn’t go hard enough.
Then my mate Alan at uni lent me Barbarossa and let me assure you Barbarossa goes hard. But somehow I never clicked that this is dance music, because it was Evil.
There’s not much that’s subtle about Barbarossa, the cover is a soldier that’s been run over by a tank and that pretty much sums up this record. Cubanate aren’t here to do subtle.
What differentiates this album from the trad side of Industrial dance is that this isn’t based on techno. I’m pretty sure the synth bass on the Vortech I is inspired by Psytrance and that’s not the only part of this album that resembles one of the world’s most maligned music genres.
The first track is pretty much just shock and awe as the album comes blasting at you, both boots first. But it’s track two, the title track that the band made their name with.
Barbarossa is the perfect synthesis of dance and metal. The tearing guitars duel with the acid squelch and the drums hit hard enough to bloody your nose. This is teeth bared, bloody knuckled, aggressive, but somehow really catchy. I’m not sure if it crossed over into the rock clubs but this song rattled the cages of goth and industrial nights. It has one of the first builds I would have heard and to its credit, it’s still one of the best. It’s incredible.
The band swerve massively with the third track, Joy, a song that lives up to its name. Built mainly on tribal drums as the vocalist, Mark Heal, exalts the listener to live, to share joy. It’s such a strangely upbeat and positive track. Then you get to the last verse and you understand where all this fits in with the evil vibes of the album. But still, it’s a great track and a nice transitional song after the fury of the opening tracks. It leads the more up beat swerve to the middle of the album.
I love the down to earth, street level of songs like Exaltation that can sell lyrics as daft as:
“I’ve got a big black car from Tokyo
With gasoline and a fuck off stereo”
All put to the kind of music that would inspire all sorts of dangerous driving and road rage. Which feels like the intention, as I’ve said, Cubanate aren’t here to play nice.
Lord of the Flies is one of the best closing tracks of all time. I’m back to quoting lyrics again, but when the threatening music starts,with the pulsing bass and stabbing guitar notes; Mark’s gravely voice delivers the following intro:
“The years the locusts ate are mine
You’ve played with fire too long
And now I have come back to claim what is righteously mine
This is my empire
I have come back to claim what is rightfully mine
This is my empire
And the streets I never walked
The bodies I never buried
Will be out there waiting for you
You have played with fire too long
Now I am back to tell you what to do
Look on my works and despair
Look on my works and rejoice
Rejoice!”
And then it explodes into an industrial assault of beats and guitar. I don’t have the words to get across just how much I love this song.
There was always something very Cyberpunk about this album. I’m not sure if it’s the street level violence in the songs, or the fact that the music was New and sounded like the future. I just know that if I was in Night City, this is what would be blasting out of my car during the Friday Night Firefight.
This is probably the last industrial album I fell in love with. As I said in the White Zombie entry, the whole scene never did much for me, but this is white knuckle music. It’s for dancing more than moshing but you can do either depending on what bar of the song is playing at that moment. It’s strangely upbeat and feels positive when it’s anything but. It’s exhilarating, it’s over the top. It’s kind of silly.
It’s glorious.
Turns out that the album isn’t on streaming. Here’s a youtube link.
And just Lord of the Flies.
The ways of exile 