Death in June

Wall of Sacrifice
Tesco



I've avoided Death in June for years, but have long been intrigued by singer/guitarist Douglas P.'s contributions to other people's work and his taste in music via a podcast he did a while back for Brainwashed.com. I'd always written DiJ off as another dark industrial band that flirted with fascistic imagery and had a misanthropic lyrical bent. Whereas bands like Test Dept. and Laibach openly displayed aesthetics of fascism or nationalistic motifs, they - for the most part - are doing it in a sort of political and artistic detournment and have aspects to their art and music (Futurism, Deconstructivism, Surrealism, etc.) that would never have been tolerated by a genuine fascist government such as Nazi Germany. Death in June, complete with creepy WWII Fallschirmjager jumpsuits and scary looking gargoyle masks, have a tougher go of shaking Nazi allegations. It doesn't help that frequent collaborator (and often similarly attired) Boyd Rice makes an appearance, a spoken word piece where he intones about destruction being an essential part of the wheel of life (Bring on the Night). That little ray of sunshine aside, the rest runs the gamut from smooth death folk (Fall Apart, Giddy Giddy Carousel), industrial loop melt downs (Wall of Sacrifice, Death is a Drummer) and death drones (Heilige Leben) for an alternately beautiful and desolate listening experience.

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Yeah, I ain't too happy about it, either.