aaamusic | On 25, Mar 2012

I think I get where these guys are coming from. They’ve got some fragments of Fields Of The Nephilim in the vocals and guitars, Alien Sex Fiend in the rambling acid-trip electro punk malevolence and sheer bloody-mindedness of it all, and bits and pieces of industrial in the concrete-heavy beats and nasty synths. But in all honesty, History Of Guns have managed to create a genuinely unappealing mishmash of the above, trying to stick together the nihilistic intellectualism of 80s post-punk and goth with the stompy aggression of industrial. It’s been tried and has even found success before, but ‘Whatever You Do, Don’t Go Out At 12’ just fails to push any buttons.

There are moments, yes, like a metal club dancefloor distortion grind of the guitars in ‘Who Controls You?’ and the blatant poor man’s FOTN of ‘Cold Coma’ that musters some of the commanding guitarwork of those goth greats, but overall, this album just fails to grip me no matter how many times I listen to it. ‘Cold Coma’ in all other respects feels poorly mixed and uninteresting, and the sheer irritating nature of its Alien Sex Fiend trippy techno abrasiveness attempts like ‘Anthem 23’ and ‘Closing Down This Reality’ mean that I repeatedly find myself wanting to listen to anything else. It’s almost insultingly cartoonish, and reminds me of why I never really fully engaged with the gothic subculture: the album is almost screaming its desire to be DARK and DIFFERENT and ends up sounding like a caricature. The postmodern strangeness of Alien Sex Fiend is very much of an era, and to be quite honest, it can only work once. I have an entire shelf of CDs of people who have done different aspects of this sound, I don’t really feel the need to listen to an album of it done less well but all at once.

 

Katie H-Halinski