my goodness, after i listened to this record for the first time i had to lean back and take a deep breath. wfahm asks a lot of the listener! 'voyeur' gives you everything if you're willing to make the effort. it's fast, it's slow, it's chaotic, it's heavy, it's dark, it's dreamy, it's frightening, it's quiet, it's beautiful - all of this on a vinyl plate. they pretty much stood true to their development. the next logical step so to speak. it's not far from 'mmx' but you can't deny the new additions to their sound. first thing that jumps right at you is the cleaner sound. 'mmx' rumbled a bit more. these changes are always a question of personal taste. i like it. next thing is nico the singer. almost imperceptibly he added more variety. listen to 'the black lodge' and you'll know what i mean. lastly and i think this is more a personal opinion again, this record is darker. from the cover art, over the intro, skip and outro (old horror movie string ensemble) to the lyrics which all seem to deal with the current control mania in western society and the trend of building total police states. there is an overall dark feeling to it.
it's amazing how wfahm plays with harmonies and disharmonies. they are always hard on the edge of overstepping the mark of too much dissonance before they push you into another wonderful soundscape. check the song 'scopophobia' on youtube with guest vocals by arkadi zaslavski of dioramic. i think it's pretty representive for the rest of the songs.
wfahm changed their record label for this release. from lifeforce records to season of mist records from france. at first i thought i had to order from france because the most common distro nuclear blast records didn't offer it. 'damned be foreign shipping costs!' was my thought. moreover i exchanged some mails with a dude of season of mist asking for eventual colour pressings. he said that most likely it would appear only on black vinyl. so my anticipation wasn't that cheerful. that changed immediately as i got a link to the impericon site, a german hardcore merchandise giant. first point to be happy about was the lower shipping costs and the second was the pre-order deal.
with the lovely clear vinyl came a download card, a poster, a sticker and a shirt. nice stuff! on the bonus stuff picture you can see the cut out pressing info sticker that was attached to the shrink wrap. as i always remove the shrink wrap to store the records into reclosable poly bags, the attempts of removing these stickers are everytime a gamble. sometimes they can be removed easily, sometimes they crease or even rip. after a great trick revealed by mike of the one thing that still holds true blog i was able to solve that problem ;-)
season of mist records. 2012.
