Vienna’s DESOLAT are back, and they’re hungry. Hungry to scream in the faces of both sides of extremism. Hungry to wake up a society of sheep content to “live” asleep as they amble drowsily towards their own doom. Hopefully hungry to make some badass noise in the process. If their past two slabs are any indication, that’s what’s coming up with People As Idiots & Idiots As Leaders.
‘Idiots As Leaders’ lumbers forth, doom-laden with the weight of nations (and a bit of early PENTAGRAM) before the snarling sneer of vocalist/guitarist Alfred Satani is kicked into life by the Klaus/Mentl rhythm section. This is nobody’s sad-ass pity party. This is meant to be an insurrection of the mind. ‘Pig Race To The Apocalypse’ undulates at times, twitches in others, but holds together by sheer force of will amid the turbulence of noise, while ‘This Sadness Makes Me Rage’ is a fast-paced exorcism called forth and cast out by the one and only Jarboe, who has lost none of her ability to entrance within a world of chaos.
The haranguing ‘Good People Keep Their Mouths Shut While The Assholes Believe The World Belongs To Them’ lives up to its title, elements of BRUTAL JUICE and the mighty KEELHAUL surfacing, and if the section between 1:33 and 1:44 isn’t catchier and more downright danceable than it has any right to be I’ll eat my work boots. I can definitely hear NO MEANS NO and even a bit of latter-day CIRCLE JERKS (think VI) in ‘The Art Of Shit’, but the penultimate ‘Cyberdyne Employment Application’ finds DESOLAT at possibly its most far-reaching ever in terms of sonics. Everything from Hesher cock rock to noise to a near-industrial sturm und drang combine to achieve and embrace aural hysteria, which isn’t a bad thing when you’re a band of DESOLAT’s ilk and caliber.
Finishing off with the knuckle-dragging sludge-core of ‘Humans Are Such Easy Prey’, the Austrians have given us both much to think about and, in a way, marching orders. Shit won’t change unless we change it, folks. Take heed.
Review By: Lord Randall
DESOLAT
People As Idiots & Idiots As Leaders
Reptilian Records (ROW) / Exotic Fever Records (US)