Words by Mikel McCoy
Alec Empire started his career out founding Atari Teenage Riot, an answer to all the neo-Nazi techno that was filling German dance floors in the early ’90s. Since then he has made a name for himself recording bombastic, punk-influenced dance music both with Atari Teenage Riot and as a solo artist. His latest, The Golden Foretaste of Heaven, travels along the same channels as previous efforts with its direct and at times dissident sound and songs. On the continuum of dance tunes that rock listeners tend to dig a lot, Empire’s music falls on the Detroit techno side of Kraftwerk and Daft Punk. But where Kraftwerk and Daft Punk records are built from R&B rhythms and driving video game melodies, Empire’s techno leanings lead him into less familiar territory, where Detroit’s body of beats finishes assembling in Berlin’s grey factory.
Songs like opener “New Man” have autobahn driving beats with ascending keyboard lines, film covered cold robotic vocals that distance the singer from his songs. Empire’s start may have begun as a polictal reaction to the neo–Nazi presence in dance music, but the politics on Foretaste are foremost personal. Songs about relationships with people dominate the record, and requisite themes of alienation complete the industrial/digital hardcore package. Empire’s metaphors and similes aren’t as razor sly as, say, Trent Reznor’s can be, but they do the job of letting the listener know some wrong has been committed and won’t be forgiven so easily.
The Golden Foretaste of Heaven is not a record you put on and sing along with as you clean your apartment — these songs require some time to get used to, to find the right way to wrap your head around. From the savage/ragged smash of “If You Live or Die” to the complex interplay of keyboard and machine samples on “Robot Love”, Empire keeps listeners on their toes like a ganster shooting at the ground, which is commendable, but toes get tired and settling down just a bit can be nice.
Empire’s music is a lot of engaging things, but ‘nice’ is not one of them. Nowhere is this more salient than with the vocals. They are artificial, robotic and monotone, all adjectives that are superlative to this type of music, but they’re can also be distracting. I’m all for the cold robotic dance song, but Empire’s vocal approach comes across as melodramatic on occasion. However, Empire’s fans will be happy to hear more of what he’s been doing and doing well for a while now, and fans of industrial’s oft-languid genre conventions will like this too. The sound of the songs is pure rock; the guitars shoot out in tubes propelled by sound and the keyboards act as pistons keeping the whole dangerously hot machine from overheating. Hang on (Eat Your Heart Out, 2008).
