indarknessletmedwell
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Posts: 20
(4/3/04 2:13 am)
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Lex Talionis - review
Lex Talionis was the first full-length studio album by Sol Invictus: my CD version is copyright 1993, but it was originally released in about 1990. ‘Primitive’ is certainly an adjective one would readily apply to this work. Sonically, the production is muddy, the instrumentation consisting primarily of fuzzy bass and keyboard progressions, accompanied by slow, noisy industrial thuds from a drum machine, the tone intermittently lightened by the presence of an acoustic guitar. The structure is effectively symmetrical, beginning and ending with two versions of the same simple piano-led instrumental, a pattern to be repeated on later albums. What make it all so distinctive are of course the vocals, which are divided between Tony Wakeford and Ian Read, the latter voice being more prominent. The initial reaction to hearing the two men’s singing, depending on one’s listening background, is likely to be one of scepticism. Again, ‘primitive’ seems the most appropriate description: flat and frequently tuneless delivery, with speech impediments sometimes swallowing words.
However, the more accustomed one becomes to this sound, the more apposite and perversely appealing it seems. The song ‘Kneel to the Cross’ is a case in point: towards the end, Ian Read attempts a refrain ‘It’s ever so wrong / To dare to be strong’, perhaps the most tuneless moment on the entire album, as the words ‘ever’ and ‘dare’ struggle to find a note to rest on. In the context of the song, though – a bitter view of the early spread of authoritarian Christianity from the perspective of one of the declining sun-worshipping cults – this style of singing is quite plausible. One can easily envisage Ian Read as a peasant in the dark ages, conveying raw futility rather than making any pretence to bourgeois vocal refinement. Perhaps the strongest section musically is what could be referred to as the central ‘suite’ of three songs beginning with Wakeford’s acoustic guitar-driven ballad ‘The Ruins’. This simple, haunting song is Wakeford’s first central appearance vocally, and provides a refreshing shift from the more industrial sound to this point. This is followed by the majestic Nietzschean rhetoric of ‘Tooth and Claw’ and the catchy chorus of ‘Blood Against Gold’, Read’s strongest moment and perhaps the album’s most effective use of martial percussion. Overall, the sound is basic, with some residues of the 80s outfits with which Wakeford had been associated, but this formula was perhaps more appropriate than the increasingly ornamental instrumental backings which Sol Invictus has opted for latterly. While ‘apocalyptic folk’ is always an unsatisfactory label, since nothing on the album could really be described as ‘folk’, the singing style certainly has more in common with that of England’s proletarian traditional singers (and the idea of singing as social function rather than passive ‘art’) than polished pop or refined lieder. Tony Wakeford’s doleful monotone is perhaps closer to ‘folksong’ than the dark crooning of Douglas P. or the incantatory effusions of David Tibet. Ian Read is more erratic than any of these names, and while Lex Talionis is interesting partly because of this, one can see why the presence of two singers in Sol Invictus would not have been sustainable for much longer.
- Indarknessletmedwell
Edited by: indarknessletmedwell at: 4/3/04 2:20 am
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