CD Feature/ Wumpscut: "Fuckit"
TobiasOver the course of nearly 2 decades, Rudy Ratzinger has grown from too-obvious Skinny Puppy/Leather Strip admirer into possibly the most original noisemaker in electro-goth. For several albums now he's been a unique commodity, enveloping fans in swirling, pounding, but singularly listenable nightmares of despair, all in the name of some-or-other quest to drill ever deeper into the hypothetical mind of, say, a serial killer who's in need of a real-deal Catholic exorcism.
After a couple of missteps, mostly of a phoning-in sort, on his last couple of albums, the Wump has at last re-evaluated the formula that made 2004's Evoke such a peach and doused a bunch of new material in it. "Father, I am the Boo," he rumbles in his demon-in-quicksand rasp in the album opener as an innocent, quirky kraut-electro line gives way to haunting, unforgettable cellos, a playfulness repeated even more transparently in the title track, which could have easily fit on Evoke.
In these spaces Ratzinger condenses the essence of his ostensible message: there's always a little dancing going on somewhere, even in the 7th circle.
By Eric Seager
Homepage: Wumpscut
Homepage: Metropolis Records
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