From: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Subject: Review: Noise Unit - Strategy Of Violence
Reply-To: awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Al Crawford)
Organization: The University Of Edinburgh - Department Of Computer Science
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 18:29:36 GMT
Followup-To: rec.music.industrial


Noise Unit		Strategy Of Violence		Dossier DCD 9035 [Ger]

	Total Running Time: 49 min 05 sec

	1.	Corroded Decay			5:25
	2.	Hollow Ground			6:32
	3.	Hate You Feel			5:27
	4.	Assualt				5:44
	5.	Carnage				5:17
	6.	Kick To Kill			4:07
	7.	Alle Gegen Alles		4:32
	8.	The Passage			5:17
	9.	No Soul, No Fear		6:27

Noise Unit was originally a collaboration between Bill Leeb (Front Line
Assembly, Delerium, Intermix) and Marc Verhaegen (The Klinik, X10 and
others). Later on they drafted in Leeb's colleague Rhys Fulber for the
second album and now, for the third album, they've disposed of Verhaegen
converting Noise Unit from a rather interesting collaboration into Yet
Another Front Line Assembly Spinoff.

Well, almost. Although it's certainly the case that _Strategy Of Violence_
lacks some of the Verhaegen touches (more analogue synths and effects, more
"noise") that made the earlier Noise Unit releases distinctively different
from Front Line Assembly, most of the tracks here do have a style of their
own. It's not exactly the Noise Unit sound, but then again it's not just
more Front Line Assembly either.

Before I continue I'd like to make clear that all my talk of "varied" and
"different" is being measured on a Leeb/Fulber axis. There's nothing on
this album that moves more than a little from the FLA sound in absolute
terms (i.e. no sudden bursts of country and western, gospel singing, heavy
metal or bubblegum pop), but it does dot around a bit within the musical
territory staked out by their various projects. So if you think that all
their music sounds the same, you're not liable to find this one any
different. Spotting the stylistic variations requires more familiarity with
their work than that. You have been warned.

Given that Noise Unit had been all but written off for dead some time ago,
the appearance of this album came as something of a surprise to me.
Listening to it (and with the supporting evidence of the wonderful track
"Falling" credited to Noise Unit on the recent _Dossiers_ label sampler),
it's my guess that the Noise Unit name has become a repository for all the
music Leeb and Fulber produce that can't be neatly pigeon-holed into one of
their existing projects (this, apparently, being the way they work - they
write the song then decide afterwards which of their projects it suits
best).

It might be expected that this would result in an inconsistent album but
far from it, _Strategy Of Violence_ is quite possibly my favourite
Leeb/Fulber project of the past year. I certainly prefer it to _Tactical
Neural Implant_ (which was probably the strongest FLA album) and there's
not a lot between this and the first Intermix album either.

The disc kicks off with "Corroded Decay", essentially a Front Line Assembly
track but one that seems to pick up where _Caustic Grip_ left off rather
than adopting the smoother, more melodic approach that characterised
_Tactical Neural Implant_. It's loud, driving, with sampled guitar riffs,
the usual assortment of electronic whooshes and crunches, plenty of vocal
samples and hoarser (or at least more heavily distorted) vocals than usual.
Classic "hard" FLA.

"Hollow Ground" is something of an oddity and a track that's *almost* very
good indeed but that trips at the last fence. It combines martial snare
drumming, heavily distorted vocals and a whumping dance beat but very
nearly earns a thumbs down due to the gratuitous overuse of an extremely
cliched sick-cow techno-style synth noise. In the end the track's sheer
energy and aggression win out, but it'd have been a lot better if they'd
removed the sounds of synthetic bovine malaise and put something original
in instead.

"Hate You Feel" is more of a typical Front Line Assembly track. True, the
vocals are slightly more distorted and the samples slightly weirder than
usual, and the track's more reminiscent of very early (_The Initial
Command_) FLA than recent material, but the track is a Front Line Assembly
song, pure and simple.

The same is more or less true of "Assualt" (their spelling, not mine) which
opens with Delerium-esque atmospherics before heading into typical FLA
percolating synths and a sample that sounds suspiciously like Bill has been
watching Star Trek. "Carnage" also stays on a well-trodden path (I'm sure
I've heard that metallic clanking noise before) and could be segued into
any FLA album with no problems. Quite a good track though with some nice
samples, it's just a shame that the melodic theme that eventually emerges
after a couple of minutes isn't used more heavily.

"Kick To Kill" moves into more techno-oriented territory. Well, sorta. From
another point of view it could be dismissed as just a faster than usual
Front Line Assembly track but it often seems that the difference between
the two genres amounts to little more than the BPM and the synth sounds
used. By that definition, this track falls somewhere between olde-style
electronic body music and techno - techno synth sounds, techno BPM, but
with typically distorted EBM-style vocals.

"Alle Gegen Alles" is very atypical, from the odd "Where the fuck is my
ambulance?" sample to the quirkily springy beat (reminiscent of the track
"Paradissiets" from Cyberaktif's _Tenebrae Vision_) to the vocals which are
a) in German and b) deeper and more distorted than Leeb's usual vox.
Decidedly odd and very good.

"The Passage" is more Delerium-esque in nature, being constructed largely
of samples. True, it's got a beat (eventually), but it's a slow one and the
pretty chimes, moody string synths and lack of vocals place it much more
firmly in the Delerium realm than in FLA territory. Excellent.

The disc is rounded off by the impressive "No Soul, No Fear", _Caustic
Grip_ era "hard" FLA meets orchestral/operatic samples a la Intermix's
"Requiem Dub". Good stuff indeed.

This album isn't about to win Bill and Rhys any new fans - if you didn't
like what's gone before, chances are you won't like this either - but it is
an impressive effort and, as I've already said, probably my favourite piece
of music from this duo's impressive output over the last year. Front Line
Assembly fans should certainly try to get hold of this one. One or two of
the tracks might appeal to the "I like Delerium but I don't like FLA"
brigade but that's probably not enough to justify the album's purchase.
Note that my rating below really only reflects the album's worth to someone
who already likes the Front Line Assembly sound - I'm just too familiar
with FLA and related projects to pretend I could give anything like an
objective rating of this.

As for availability - Third Mind should be kicking themselves for not
getting the rights to this in Europe which is annoying since Dossier's
distribution isn't as good, but I suppose there's a chance Third
Mind/Roadrunner might license this from Dossier at some time for release in
The Other Place. Failing that, it should be available on import.

Erland Rating: +3 (for the FLA-ed, at least)

-- 
			Al Crawford - awrc@dcs.ed.ac.uk
	  Department Of Computer Science, The University of Edinburgh
   Rm 1410, JCMB, Kings Buildings, Mayfield Rd, EDINBURGH, EH9 3JZ, Scotland
	     Tel: +44 (0) 31 650 5165  Fax: +44 (0) 31 667 7209
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