DOGS BLOOD RISING

'Dogs Blood Rising' is a guitar and bass free album but is very intense from the first notes right until the end. The opener 'Christus Christus (the Shells Have Cracked)' gives birth to something vile where Aleister Crowley tape loops are played at varying speeds and direction creating a kaleidoscopic effect.

'Falling Back in Fields of Rape' is a tune that both 'Current 93' and stable mates 'Death in June' occasionally re-visited, giving it a severe re-working on a number of occasions. This version is certainly the creepiest and peaks with some insane sounding vocals by 'Crass' front-man Steve Ignorant. Rose McDowall of 'Strawberry Switchblade' also contributes a spoken passage about 'falling from a helicopter' and other unlikely ways to die.

David Tibet sounds like the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada throughout with his high pitched shrieking which quite literally sounds like a hallucinatory nightmare. Just one look at him on the inner sleeve is enough to give you the heebie-jeebies.

To cheer myself up I think on little plastercine man 'Morph' from 'Take Hart'. He does, after-all, enormously resemble lead vocalist David Tibet.

This is very different in sound from almost all of their recordings from 1988 onwards. If you have a penchant for the morbid suffering of Christ and almost Satanic Mass-like lyrics, you'd do well to check out 'Dawn' and the well and truly terrifying 'Nature Unveiled' which took this sound as far as the genre could go.

One point is docked for the too live sounding 'Jesus Wept' which overstays its welcome by a good 5 minutes, although the manipulation of vocals through tapes from various sources are very impressive.

Unbelievably there's a cover version of Simon and Garfunkel's 'Scarborough Fair' to see us out. Needless to say, it's the polar opposite in atmosphere of the original.

The best thing about early Current 93 is that David Tibet doesn't yet sound like UK 90's astrologer 'Mystic Meg'. From that point on I went off them very quickly. 'Dog's Blood Rising' is however a fantastic album if you're in a misanthropic mood. If you're not you'll HATE THIS - guaranteed!

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