Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 27/01/2003
Label: City Slang

Feel pity for The Faint. Stuck in a Groundhog Day scenario where every moment is 1983, they inhabit a world of Pac Man, Michael J Fox and imminent nuclear threat. The mobile phone and Sinclair C5 meanwhile are still to be invented. They probably dream of A Flock Of Seagulls.

Emerging from the fervent Omaha scene of the mid-90s, and passing through several guitar-based incarnations since, the five-piece have finally settled on a sound that owes much to the 'Second British Invasion'. In other words, the New Romantic synthesisers of Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Duran Duran and The Human League. While this is no bad thing in theory - there was much great music made in the era - and as a career move eminently sensible, considering the props given last year to all things Electroclash, the evidence on 'Danse Macabre' suggests a struggle for identity beneath the weight of their influences. There is a recognisable sound here, but little in the way of songs.

The opening 'Agenda Suicide' is all skeletal guitar and thick slabs of dissonance and bleeps. Vocalist Todd Baechle sounds suitably man-machine-like, lost and metallic among the technology. 'Glass Danse World' is more like Nine Inch Nails before they got heavy - a problem that becomes apparent as the record unfolds. It's neither extreme enough to compete with the likes of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle nor pretty enough to challenge the achievements of Depeche Mode. When Baechle sings "Let the poison spill from your throat" he sounds more Midge Ure than Alan Vega. 'Posed To Death' is a better title, riding on a bouncy rhythm, but the effect is the same. Thoughts of the Here And Now tour spring unwittingly to mind.

The better moments are saved until last. 'The Conductor' has the melodrama of early Cure while 'Violent' bangs away like proto techno. The funeral dirge that is 'Ballad Of A Paralysed Citizen' wraps things up inside 35-minutes, but the concept has worn thin by then. The Faint remain trapped by limitations of their own making.

    by Adam Webb