Ex.Order – Shuchu Ryoku

I have felt very strange for last few weeks, kind of hungry. Hungry for some new excitements, that only a good piece of heavy music can bring. With lots of copycats around, a new album of Ex.Order arrives right in time to retrieve my belief in power electronics, which was shaken and lost in past years. Here, in front of me, is something that belongs to the golden years of this genre. Being a fruit of imagination of two talented guys, Knut Enderlien and Rene Lehmann, this formation is not a newcomer of the scene. Especially Rene, who is more known for his activity in the Loki Foundation label and the dark ambient act Inade. Ex.Order presented few intense albums in the past, which can be numbered already as classics for the fans of heavy electronics. 'The Law of Heresy', 'The Infernal Age' and many other albums and collaborations with other bands, all of them represent a rich resume of this duo. Now it is time to taste from the new dish that those two guys prepared under the name 'Shuchu Ruoku'.

The concentration of power is the meaning of the name of this album, and concentration it is. Ten tracks that generate the total power start their run to bring terror into my ears. Sonic landscapes created by distorted industrial sound flow out of the monitors. The sound is full of waving rises and falls, like it is some siren that blasts the air; heavy layers are charged with distant harsh scratches and noises. Lots of sampled voices are added constantly to contribute to the structure; together with distorted and pulsating aggressive spoken vocals. Mechanized filling presents in the atmosphere during the entire album to add a claustrophobic and oppressing nature of huge machines crushing the bones of civilization. The album is not a regular wall of noise that can be listened in other collages at the scene, the influence of Inade experience fills the music with deeper and more sophisticated messages and structures. The projection of spirit of industrialization, massive brainwashing control over the human mind, politics filth and dirt, all of that is inside to support the reflection of our modern world crafted inside the art of analog sound and heavy riffs. "To understand Shuchu Ruoku is to feel the principles of strategy", and Ex.Order strikes the listener with one of the best power electronics acts of past few years to bring the result in a statement of humanity bound to the shrine of divine brutality and self-destruction.

The album comes in a beautifully designed folding carton case and it is out on Loki side label Power & Steel.

Ex.Order presenting ten new tracks of unrelenting Noise Electronics covering numerous areas of violence, disillusionment and abstraction. Shuchu Ryoku means the focused power and the wall of sound here is underlayed by hypnotical ambient-noise layers which stands for a well known trade mark of Ex.Order. A throbbing audio force built up by massive analogue soundwaves, heavily driven mechanical percussion, sample-collages and vocals. This is another complex and explosive industrial tapestry of sound, performed with control and brutality.