Synthrock
2013
We'll never know if Billy Idol's Cyberpunk (1993) was an elaborate joke or a techno-doomer prophecy that arrived two decades too early. Its unnecessary cover of VU's 'Heroin' aside, the record was one of the few mainstream efforts to document fears of a cold, ubiquitously computerized future that Brazil, Blade Runner and Demolition Man prophesied.
Could that concept be revived in a way that didn't feel like a tepid retread of an industrial rock cliche? That's the thought that goes through my head when listening to The Bleach Room, the final record by Britain's Ulterior. It's a head-on collision of frigid post-punk and molten synthpunk heat, with metallic shrapnel from Idol, 'Mode and Placebo flying everywhere.
"Fun Gun" gets us off on the right track by providing an epic stream-of-thought spoken word intro track befitting Suede's doom-y 'Introducing the Band' with vocalist Honey's paranoid, echoing lyrics crashing against its foreboding drums and punishing synths. 'Zero Over Two' has machine noise gurgling ominously in the background as Honey sings 'Two hearts beating in an insect drone', nearly drowned out by juddering, massive drum loops. 'Psychic Chic's, slinky electronics-laden riffs bring to mind Girls Against Boys' ill-fated foray into grungy techno-rock, but performed with 100x the zhuzh, closing out with a furious coda of distorted synth loops befitting their self-appointed tag of "Icecold – Speedhate – Staticvenom – Technopop”.
On their previous effort, 2009's Wild in Wildlife, Ulterior's biggest influence was probably the polemic rawk of Manic Street Preachers mixed with some Suicide, but everything here feels rougher and colder, like they got rid of the performative '4Real' etched-in-blood arm tattoos, threw on some Sisters of Mercy and Nitzer Ebb and got to work. Honey's Andrew Eldritch vocal impersonation is at its peak on the cyber-glam rush of the danceable 'Body Hammer' and the pulsating 'In Vitro', while the rollicking psychobilly of 'Motorin'" feels like what the Jesus and Mary Chain might have recorded if they were resurrected from cryogenic storage in 2097.
What's constant throughout the record is a sense of relentless sonic fury, a grotesque display of colossal sturm und drang. It doesn't end at the menacing bass rumble of 'Skydancing' that leads into its roaring machine-like loops. 'The Locus of Control' fires a brutal final salvo with every instrument's VU needles deep in the red, with a paranoia-soaked lyrical rant against mass media, the military-industrial complex and the surveillance panopticon that Jaz Coleman would have been proud of.
I don't think I'm going out on a limb here when I say 'rock music' has been badly in need of a swift kick in the teeth for some time now. We were quick to embrace the garage rock revival of the '00s and its deluge of "The"-prefixed bands as a counterweight to the twin scourges of nu-metal and post-grunge buttrock, only to find ourselves cast aside when the scene, slapped with the ridiculous ex-post facto moniker of "indie sleaze", collapsed in on itself by 2009 or so. We've wandered the desert sands of guitar-and-drums bands for years looking for something unabashedly loud, bold and maybe even a bit apocalyptic. And Primal Scream's XTRMNTR aside, we've largely come up empty handed until now.
Curve, The Anix, 16Volt and even Orgy have all tried their hand at marrying the worlds of rock 'n roll with synth-laden metallic rage. But none have pulled this off with the sheer self-assured audacity that The Bleach Room has. This is Love and Rockets if they embraced Escape from New York's-pre-millennium tension rather than chasing the psychedelic dragon. This is Depeche Mode if they dropped the spiritual pretensions of Songs of Faith and Devotion and recorded 10 different versions of 'Rush'. This is New Order with cybernetically enhanced balls. There's a very good chance you won't come across another record with this unholy union of synthpunk grind and glammy abandon in your lifetime.
