Album: Less To Heaven
Year: 2022
Genre: Industrial
If anyone has read even a smattering of the album reviews I’ve feverishly typed for this blog, the reader would’ve noticed I don't go negative too often. It makes some sense as the majority of these reviews are about albums that came out well before the existence of the internet. Meaning, I’m not going to take the time to write a review slamming some band that put out an album in 1987. New releases, though, get unbiased treatment and are open to both praise, criticism and indifference. After listening to Less To Heaven, this not going to bode well for Psyclon Nine this time.
I’ll preface this by saying that at one point Psyclon Nine were the most exciting band in the industrial kingdom, playing with relentless ferociousness and then taking their aggro-industrial into the realms of metal after a few albums. No, they aren’t the first band to do this, but their approach to the fusion was unique and severely vicious. They were the band to beat and frontrunners of the early 2000s electro generation. It's been since 2013 since I’ve listened to a new Psyclon Nine album. No real reason for the lapse in listening other than bands sometimes get lost in the shuffle. When I saw they were releasing a new record, I thought I’d take a chance and I picked it up.
I intently sat in front of my speakers to give the initial listen my full concentration, anticipating an exhilarating, yet, terrifying experience. By the time the needle hit the runout groove on side 2, I was incredibly underwhelmed and disappointed with what I heard. The term I would use for this album is lackluster; it has a few peaks but many valleys. It was instantly obvious to me that the direction of the band was no longer to be the scariest, harshest most grinding industrial band around, but rather to create an album made to shift the listener's mood. Not a problem. I’m absolutely fine with this. The trouble is the band’s output. For the most part it’s bland and uninteresting, with the exception of the sequential tracks “The Poison Will Deaden The Pain” and “Off With Their Heads,” the rest of the album sounds uninspired. Their effort to step into Skinny Puppy “spooky” territory using layers of synths, noised coming from nowhere and whispered vocals falls short and comes across as unconvincing. It adds so much filler to an album of songs that aren’t good enough for time-wasting intervals. Instead of achieving and artistic balance of aggression and darkness, the album feels disjointed. I’ll break this down technically. The album is just under 39 minutes long and there are 4 instrumental-ish interludes (3 of which are the last 3 fucking songs on the album) and they take up 19 minutes of the record. Psyclon Nine are good, but they are not Cevin Key, Nivek Ogre or D.R. Goettel to be able to pull off that type of concept. I took a few days away from this record and have revisited it at least three more times with no change in my opinion. It anything, it got worse. I now believe they should have gotten Chino Moreno to sing on “X's On Her Eyes” because I realized how much it sounds like a Deftones song and how much better it would’ve been. This album isn't a complete waste, just so much of it is. Sorry Psyclon Nine. I’ll catch up with you on the next record.
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