AL JOURGENSEN

Wicked Lake Soundtrack

13th Planet/ CD 2008

It’s time to face the facts. Al Jourgensen is a true workaholic. Perhaps some of you didn’t even manage to wipe tears of sorrow after the announcement of MINISTRY’s death. The sound of funeral bells’ is still ringin’ in ears of loyal fans, but there’s no time for mourning. It was sure that such an active artist will be back rather sooner than later. And today we have an opportunity to hold in our hands a new work of this extremely talented artist and industrial metal scene legend.

The new release of the loudest – along with NAPALM DEATH’s Barney - Anti-Bush fanatic on the extreme music scene is the soundtrack from bloody horror movie "Wicked Lake". It’s quite easy to find links between Al and movie’s director Zach Passero. That guy was responsible for the final shape of some of MINISTRY’s videos. What is the biggest disappointment here? Without any doubts the fact that we do not have here crazy new compositions created by Jourgensen especially for that movie. I’ve already hoped for some narcotic-industrial-gore musical landscapes, but the disc is full of well-known and – what is the strongest point of that release – yet unreleased songs of the 13th Planet artists like: ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS, PRONG, REVOLTING COCKS, FALSE ICONS and of course MINISTRY. In addition to that there are few songs performed by Jourgensen’s friends: MESHUGGAH, HEMLOCK and THREAT SIGNAL. What is important here is that however the album is very diversed there is no dissonance.

There’s no bigger sense in writing about songs from albums like: "Numinosum" ( "Evading", "Residual Presence"), "Power of The Damager" ( "No Justice", "Can not Stop The Bleeding") and "Cover Up" (" Radar Love, "" Bang a Gong"). I guess that most of you already have had chance to listen to them.
So I’ll focus on more interesting topics – namely: the unreleased songs, two unreleased songs to be more correct. The most interesting is MINISTRY’s "Cuz U R Next". The song was co-written by Paul Raven - band’s bassist who passed away last year. It’s typical furious industrial-metal massacre. That song could fit really well recent band’s albums - "The Last Sucker" and "Rio Grande Blood". But I must admit that due to those circumstances - the end of the band and Raven’s participation - emotions are stronger than usually.

There is a foretaste of the new REVOLTING COCKS’ album, too. ( "Sex-O Olympic-O"). "Hookerbot3000" with dance electrobeat feeds hope for a large dose of musical perversion. Taken from the "Cocked & Loaded (2006) " 10 Millions Ways To Die "sounds like a track taken the film about the adventures of moustached Bavarians in California in 1977.

For those who didn’t follow Jourgensen’s career so carefully this album is an opportunity to get acquainted with the profile of 13th Planet. But for those who know what Jourgensen did last years - both as a musician and label’s boss – there are very few interesting surprises here.