A Sweeping Curve of Sound

For all the blather about how Industrial music serves dark purposes and powers, it is actually pretty rare to come across a band that seems somewhat serious in their convictions. Scratch the loud klanging beats and horror-movie samples, and you’ll often find a rather pedestrian product. So it is refreshing to know that when Peter Devin of yelworC invokes notorious occultist Aleister Crowley and dark ritualistic magick, he really means it (man).

“yelworC’s dark stage performances usually consisted of Devin dressed in a robe, singing from a wooden podium and surrounding himself by candles, pagan symbols and a black tapestry backdrop”

You know, this sort of thing…

Around on and off since the early 1990s, yelworC returns with “Icolation”, the second album since the project reformed in 2004 (sans co-founding member Oliver Büttner). This time the band gets downright diabolic with a set of songs inspired by Dante’s Inferno.

“Drawing influence from Dante’s Inferno, Icolation takes the listener on a journey of the damned, from darkest hell straight to an apocalyptic purgatory. The music is as hard, twisted and complex as before - a synthesis of strong, vital rhythms and darkest melodic compositions. Darker than dark, harder than hard - but always featuring that surprising and patented twisted YelworC sound. The master of evil electronics has returned, and has brought the very sounds of Hell with him.”

So how does it sound? It is surprisingly accessible. Much of the record involves itself with atmospherics laden with samples, at times bordering on dark ambient rather than industrial music. This works in the albums favor, making the darkness a more seductive and unnerving presence rather than relying on the battering-ram mentality of many bands working within the industrial genre. Some of the tracks, like “Lord of the Three” and “The Bells of Waiting” are almost pretty (in a demonic, clattering sort of way). When the music does become faster-paced and more aggressive on tracks like “In the Purgatory”, yelworC avoids boring monotony and keeps things interesting. My only real complaint is the album’s over-reliance on “evil” vocoder-manipulated vocals, which just comes across as somewhat cheesy to me. Still, this is a strikingly mature work, that explores occult themes and ideas about supernatural evil without falling into many of the traps similar artists encounter.

Downloads: yelworC - “Lost Futile” (clip) and Ecce Mundo ver.2 (clip)
(from the album “Icolation”)

Links:  yelworC on MySpace