Ideal Father - Serial
A new and rather obscure industrial act has just emerged from the Swedish underground, first debut release via digital Bandcamp and as a limited 30 copies cool-looking cassette as well. Most of you would probably think ( when you are looking at the cover-artwork ) that we´re dealing with a power-electronics act, it fooled me. Far from aggressive material here, creepy industrial-music moods with touches of ambient and drone. Through my research, I found out that the act has been influenced by Brighter Death Now and Aghast (Cold Meat Industry) when I first heard it... I was thinking about some of the moody and eerie pieces with Throbbing Gristle (tracks like Beachhead and Epping Forrest) and to some of the weird ambient-creakiness by Nurse With Wound. Purely sinister mood music with a nod to old-school industrialism and off course Cold Meat Industry.
The first track called Pure starts with a single... cowbell sound?. Additional (and misty) ghost-like vapors of sound sucks the listener right into a cold parallel universe. Moaning and dead´ ish recordings of human voices can also be traced here, with haunting industrial drones. Fxxxxxx loves it. It has that thick fog/misty atmosphere, so thick that u cannot see through it. And you know how the sound is when there is a heavy fog in your neighborhood! Cold-like hell, perfect!.
Second track Drop is a spine-tingling piece with humming ambient-machines. Cannot help thinking back to Lars Von Trier´s paranormal series called Riget, this stuff could work perfectly as the soundtrack! Very sinister, yet strangely calm and seductive.
Third track Never follows up and convinces the listener that we are (certainly) dealing with something which is good for everyone! Look away from the cover-artwork showing a naked female body in a bloody bathtub! I just have to say, sinister and evil sounding? Yes!... But incredibly soothing (and hypnotic) at the same time. Pretty neat tech-guys behind this project, the atmospherics are bloody amazing!
And that is all that you will get from me. Most of the tracks on this album are similar in mood, theme, and style. BUT, that doesn't make it a lesser album. Ideal Father has found a unique conceptual sound-aesthetic, and have chosen to use that on an entire album (and they have done so perfectly). The first thought I had (when the album ended) was that I wanted it to be longer, it´s that kind of an album. A well-thought recorded idea that needs your attention. Fans of classic and traditional industrial and Cold Meat Industry will love it, I am sure of it!.
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