Once more hiding the true intention of their musical experiments behind an Oscar Wilde alias is Sebastian Melmoth. The crumbling misery of the soul that pervades their previous releases remains but there is perhaps a light at the end of their downbeat sonic boom boom tunnel.
It does, after all, take a certain mind set to come up with lyrics like “A certain cretin spews out half-digested rhetoric, closing down hospitals and funding dictatorships” (from “From The Depths”) and then bookend it with a relentless bit of eighties underground electro like “My God”. Some might even say that said mind set was that of the unbalanced revolutionary but it is more likely to be driven by the dissatisfied insiders which would, with a bit of imagination, make Sebastian Melmoth the Scarlet Pimpernel of modern music. However, this band’s customary nihilism is never far from the surface and “Skurwysyn” proves more than adequate evidence of that. That and a desire to incur the wrath of the Catholic Church, it would seem. It is a pity that getting banned doesn’t translate into record sales these days.
Although I cannot claim to a big fan of this sort of music, I can nonetheless applaud the dissatisfied and anguished intelligence that drives Sebastian Melmoth onwards into undeserved obscurity. They may well be miserable bastards but they are certainly not boring. I can (almost) see the sunshine.
The album is available (for free) from Bandcamp. Don’t forget to read the lyrics.