The Industrial Twilight: Alec Empire

Sunday, February 2, 2020

Alec Empire - "Futurist" [2004]

Artist: Alec Empire

Title: Futurist

Genre: Digital Hardcore

Country: Germany

Release date: 2004

Track List:

Kiss Of Death
Uproar
Night Of Violence
Vertigo
Overdose
Make Em Bleed
Gotta Get Out
Point Of No Return
Hunt You Down
In Disguise
Terror Alert High
XXV3

I think Alec Empire needs no introduction to anyone who knows what digital hardcore is, and I'm honestly not sure why I haven't posted anything related to Atari Teenage Riot on here yet. While ATR was the band that introduced me (and not only me) to digital hardcore, I'd rather post one of the finest solo works of Alec Empire, entitled "Futurist" ("For a man so certain that there isn't a future, he looks like one of its most confident architects" - from a review of Alec Empire's previous album "Intelligence & Sacrifice" in NME 2002).

While "Futurist" is a logical sequel to "Intelligence & Sacrifice", it's probably more influenced by punk, metal and aggro-industrial than any other release in Alec Empire's discography (but not forgetting the electronics, of course!), and it's brutal and chaotic just like any other his work. There were even attempts to get this album on metal-archives.com, although I personally don't think it counts as metal (and the moderators of MA most likely think so too). If anything, "Futurist" would be best described as "cyberpunk", if only it was a proper music genre.

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).