As second-generation industrial egoist-martyrs go, German pitbull Alec Empire and Trent Reznor have a lot in common. Physically, their impossibly wan expressions work overtime to contrast their black-hole locks, suggesting brooding dichromatic cartoon characters. And their hammer-to-the-head blunt takes on Nietzsche and nihilism are equally cartoonish; such stunted ideas of death, destruction, and anarchy are as awe-inspiring to wayward teens as they are laughable to about everyone else.
Both skinny puppies spent the 1990s pushing industrial music in new, sometimes striking directions only to run out of black nail polish near the turn of the century. Similarly, the duo released bloated double albums a few years ago only to come back in the last few months with stripped-down, self-consciously "raw" follow-ups. After taking industrial to its logical noise-soaked endpoint, Empire struggles on his misleadingly titled Futurist, which eschews his forward-thinking dancefloor-clearing breakbeats and Eno-style ambient ramblings for a more up-front punk approach. Though he's still scowling and screaming with verve, the traditional song structures and relatively mild rock production unfortunately puts more emphasis on his straight-faced, literal-as-fuck lyrics.
"Kiss of Death" is the first and best track on the record, with the following 11 songs relegated to less inspired versions of the same Pistols-meets-KMFDM formula. The guitars dominate the mix throughout, their power chord fury nearly matching Empire's corrosive, distorted vocal. "I'm Here to stay!!! You better watch out cuz I came to terminate!!!!" he sings with genuine, if somewhat pathetic, passion (capitalization and punctuation based on his official site, natch). For any other artist, the track would be considered quite breakneck but compared to his own brand of television-static cocaine-jungle, "Kiss of Death" is almost midtempo. The three-chord simplicity is admirable and refreshing at first, though it quickly starts to wear thin in all respects.
It's easy to poke fun at Alec's somewhat lost-in-translation goth-gangster pose, but for all his anti-establishment hollering, Empire's mantras often come off as a tad militaristic in their repetitive simplicity. On the monotonous "Point of No Return", it's not enough to repeat the title over and over (and over), he even goes on to explain it, in case you were confused: "You can't go back even if you wanted to." There's reinforcing the humorless German stereotype and then, it seems, there's Alec Empire.
When wrapped in confrontational music that matches his unwavering hatred of "the man," Empire can be enthralling but Futurist's sordid punk suggests our man may have cornered himself. Now in his 30s, this black-clad fist-pumper has always been at his best when taking into account all of his industrial influences, from Einstürzende Neubauten to Ministry, and spewing them out in brain-cell-crushing odes to nothingness. Futurist, with its muddy, one-note punk-thrash revivalism that belies his talents as a versatile studio auteur, is as frustratingly unremarkable and immobile as the governments he so blatantly rails against.
