Album: Homo Sapiens Parasitus
Artist: Blitzkrieg Baby
Label: Neuropa Records
Catalogue no: NRP 69
Tracklist:
1. Hip
Hip Hooray
2. Apocalypse
to Go
3. Boys
will be Boys
4. The
March of Human Progress I
5. The
March of Human Progress II
6. Praise
the Pig
7. A
Child Soldier with the Eyes of a Clown
8. Filth
Load
9. Boo
Fucking Hoo
10. Pre-Cum
of the Apocalypse
11. Homo
Sapiens Parasitus & the Countdown to Extinction
This is Blitzkrieg Baby’s
second album on the Neuropa label, the first album Porcus Norvegicus (NRP 35) being released in 2012, and subsequently
followed up by a trilogy of EPs on Thomas Ekelund’s (Trepanerungsritualen)
label Beläten. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered Kim Sølve’s work, as
many years ago I reviewed a Swarms release for another music site. The latter
project was very much in dark ambient territory, but Blitzkrieg Baby is
something else entirely, being a mixture of song and instrumental pieces that
present as a series of menacing, nihilistic, vituperative slices of
industrial/martial/noise/death & dark ambient ranting that’s as black as it
gets.
Just a glance at the
album and song titles will clue you in to the general tenor of BB’s thesis –
that mankind is a parasite and should be removed from this planet, and I have a
sneaking suspicion that those who will like this the most won’t need any
persuading on that score. These eleven pieces stalk and glower, a gargantuan sun-blotting
hulk of a beast, an anti-body intent on ridding the Earth of its most
troublesome virus: us. It refuses to pull any punches, combining sharp lyrics,
pounding militaristic drums relentless in their power, drones, samples, and
whatever other tools and weapons that are needed to get the point across. It’s
a completely misanthropic and lightless album, allowing for no excuses or any
get-out-of-jail-free cards for mankind – the message is that homo sapiens has to go if the world is
to survive.
If you really wrap that
message around your head, it becomes an uncomfortable listen, but who is to say
that there isn’t an element of truth contained here? It’s a precise,
razor-sharp, and laser-accurate indictment of humanity’s collective behaviour
and ignorance – a reality-check on the real state of the world. We’re not
covering ourselves with glory, that’s for sure, and the picture this paints
doesn’t give any hope that we’ll turn over a new leaf and change our behaviour
any time soon. Action is needed now, not at some hypothetical future point: but
we know all too well that that is never going to happen.
Homo
Sapiens Parasitus is, in spite of its premise and darkness,
quite an accessible album, but definitely not
a good old singalong either, certainly engaging however and not without flashes
of humour (there’s a very brief outro of someone singing one-hit wonder
Europe’s famous refrain from their ‘The Final Countdown’ at the very end of the
album – let’s all laugh while the apocalypse rages around us). The sentiments
expressed here are very critical of the way we conduct ourselves, a situation
that we hear about or witness on a daily basis. It’s too trite to say ‘Well,
we’ve always been like that’ as if that’s an excuse, a whitewashing and a
shrugging of the shoulders as if to say there’s nothing we can do about it.
What this album is saying is yes, there is
a solution: maybe an asteroid with our name on it is already on its way for a
date with earth. At that point the choice will be taken away from us.
Thoroughly recommended,
and available on 12” vinyl in an edition of 150 – some in black vinyl, some in
white vinyl, and the rest in grey vinyl. Order from here:
Psymon Marshall 2019.
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