Fuckin’ shit…they went too far—this is positively MOR synth for wimpy club DJs. This band has made some of the sickest, most intense music of the past decade, and to foist this crud on us is wicked bad. People who snort cocaine listen to this grunt, not cool people like me. Nuff said.
This retrospective album by the current leaders of the industrial noise set features some remarkable material. Side one contains tracks from SPK’s out-of-print Australian singles, including classic cuts like “Kontakt” and “Mekano,” while the flip features studio material previously heard on their Live at the Crypt tape. Auto-Da-Fe has obvious moments of unevenness and even tedium, but the best compositions here possess astonishing rawness and power.
SPK, perhaps the preeminent industrial ensemble in the world today, add traditional vocals to this EP of well orchestrated percussive and synthesized noise. It may be more accessible and less affecting than their groundbreaking Leichenschrei album, but it still contains extraordinary music possessed of originality and, yes, genius.
Deathly industrial noise abounds on this well-recorded tape, a document of SPK’s last American tour. Simply the best band of its type, SPK runs through their disturbing pop music parodies and every manner of human atrocity, and always with that dynamic tribal beat in the background. The show must have really fried their brains in Lawrence, Kansas. This cassette is extraordinary.
SPK, utilizing their encyclopedic knowledge of sound and its relation to specific emotional states, hit the bull’s eye with this landmark industrial music release. Leichenschrei takes perfectly orchestrated chunks of noise, modulates them with a powerful percussion section, and even adds little shreds of humor for the hell of it. The result: industrial music-making that, instead of isolating the listener, involves them. One of the three or four best LPs of 1982, no question about it.
