In an interview I did with Diamanda Galas, the "Mike Tyson" of the voice revealed to me that she feels "lucky to be a singer, because singing is the most extroverted activity. You extrovert the sound, because the state of really being depressed is so introverted that you curl up and your head's up your ass, and when you sing you have to really make that sound go through buildings. That's your aim: to go as far as possible, and it takes you right out of depression." The quote could serve as Battery's mission statement, or at least, the major theme behind their cathartic new release, Aftermath. On this album, the band uses their now-trademark synthpop hooks and Maria Azevedo's powerful vocals to explore the emotional wreckage left in the wake of a litany of betrayals and failed relationships. A danger lies in walking on such already well-trodden ground: the demon of self-pity and nauseating pretension stalks every band that attempts to chart the dark region of the soul. Rather than crafting an introspective album for listeners to wallow in, however, Battery externalizes their damage, sharpening their stylistic and thematic focuses in order shatter depression's catatonia.
This approach works largely in part because of the perfect pairing of vocalist Maria Azevedo's voice with the composition/electronics wizardry of Shawn Brice and Evan Sornstein, who founded the band ten (!) years ago. Azevedo, essentially the centerpiece of the band, stands apart from her peers in the electronic/industrial arena. She works more in the tradition of vocalists like Galas, who understand that their voice holds the potential to function as a powerful instrument of expression and vitalization. Not a nasal whiner or a hiccuping crooner like so many of today's alt-rock female superstars, Azevedo uses her voice to fully exorcise her inner demons. She commands an impressive range in terms of pitch, and exerts a firm control over her stylistics.
The presence of a vocalist like Azevedo within an fairly traditional electro-industrial ensemble represents a shift from the norm among synth based groups, especially electro-industrial bands, who try to bury their tortured emotions beneath layers of distortion. A human's willful mechanization/automation denotes a core principle among post-'70s industrial bands; Skinny Puppy, Ministry and Front Line Assembly all used heavily treated vocals as a staple in their music, and drew heavy fire from the rivethead community when trying to wean themselves off of the effects (has the furor over Ogre's untreated vox on The Process died down yet? Not bloody likely). Though their emotional honesty and more ethereal touches should make them anathema to purists, Battery's allegiance to electronics and undisguised righteous anger have garnered them much favor among industrialists, who perhaps recognize Battery's search and destroy tactics as the next step in industrial's psychotherapeutic evolution.
Battery displays some evolutionary potential of their own on Aftermath. Previous Battery releases (Mutate, NV and Distance) displayed emotional landscapes in panorama. Aftermath zooms in on one section of terrain, leaving behind more obscure (but enjoyable) experimental tracks and interludes in favor of straightforward, fully realized compositions. They still find elbow-room for subtle, subdued tracks, but for the most part, this album is chock full o' bile and oaths of revenge. It boils over with danceable beats, ferocious electronic manipulations and the trio's now trademark marriage of vocal power, emotional confrontation and synthesizer acrobatics.
Gone with the trio's more experimental tracks are traces of lighter fare, like their eyebrow-raising covers of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" or Depeche Mode's "Shame" (they do offer up one cover, according to tradition, but it's a mellow revision of the Cure's already melancholy "All Cats Are Grey"). Aftermath is a narrowly focused album that occupies itself primarily with explorations of emotional wreckage left in the wake of a plethora of betrayals. Azevedo, now the band's sole lyric writer, directs a host of vitriolic tirades at numerous archetypes of abusive authority: the deadbeat parent, the cheating lover, the lying politician, and variously nefarious significant others (liars, cheaters, beaters and leavers). The results are cleansing, if not more than a little harrowing. But as the late German filmmaker Werner Fassbinder once postulated, "being happy isn't always fun."
Sean Flinn | Winter, 1998
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