Ascension Of The Watchers | ‘Numinosum’

I don’t quite know what’s going on here. Burton C Bell takes a few months out in the sticks with ex-Killing Joke and Fear Factory keyboardist John Bechdel, and comes back with a nondescript collection of philosophical musings that sounds, apart from crap, like some seriously underproduced and hamfisted 80’s Goth. If you think this is dark, you must be wearing sunglasses.

Whatever Bell had it mind, it didn’t work. His voice, always powerful when soaring with Fear Factory’s best records, is so far back in the mix and so weakly delivered as to be pointless. You can barely tell it’s him. The songs have neither point nor passion, and to be perfectly honest, the whole thing smacks of indulgence.

Just because you’ve been listening to Lycia and Cocteau Twins recently doesn’t mean you can make an album like them. Countless chancers have tried over the years, and it’s surprising that men as seasoned as either Bell or Bechdel would not realise the same. As for the cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Sound Of Silence’, well, it was always going to be a prime target for the sensitive metaller’s makeover, wunnit. And tellingly, it’s shit too. ‘Violent Morning’ however tops the polls here, and you’ve got to download it: it’s probably the most atrocious load of auld balls any ex metaller has yet pedalled in the name of like, feelings and stuff. Who said yes to this?

0.6 / 5 - Ciaran Tracey ::: 07/01/08