THE GRAND GUIGNOL

Despite being their most reviewed and analysed recording, I find this first 'Schloss Tegal' recording something of a dirge. The internal sleeve photos show victims of Jack The Ripper and pics of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and possibly Henry Lee Lucas. And yes, it does sound how it looks... Ugly.

This is a tuneless scourge of noise. A drone-fest of mechanical grinding whines that is far less inspired than later recordings, which are far more appealing to the misanthropist within me. I bought this in '94 and have rarely listened to it since.

Scraping the layers of dust off the outer casing and listening to it anew has done little to help me see it in a new light. 'The Grand Guignol' resembles sounds that belong in a Pittsburgh Steelworks. Normally I'd love that kind of stuff in that 'SPK', 'Throbbing Gristle' style of approach, but there's very little to grab hold of here. It's grey, dull and bleak, and has a constant use of original human torture shrieks.

Slurpy, wet background noises have looped murderer vocals laid on top uttering such phrases as ' Hunting for Humans'. over and over again.

More screeching painful sounds follow as droning keyboards wail and throb with 'Certificate of the Wound', where bloody goings on are thrown in your face with agonising male and female shrieks of terror. It reminds me of 'Mark of the Devil' - that video nasty that was so grim it didn't see a full release until this year.

Spooky and grim - yeah. but on the listenability scale this scores zero. This is the sound of Zombie's biting into your arms translated into entertainment.

"Look at the World' has a hideous looped vocal 'I could kill someone' played over a flat tuneless chord which leaves me wishing I'd left this disc well alone in it's dust covered mummified state. Far better was to follow when they left all this 'murder' filth and depravity behind.