Cleopatra 2021
No more riding shotgun, Swedish multi-instrumentalist takes charge and does a demon dance on emotional ruins.
Marking his fifty-fifth anniversary and the twenty-fifth anniversary of his solo debut, Tim Sköld is on a roll with his fifth solo album, letting industrial clang the venerated musician is famous for decay in most beautiful way: by allowing it to decompose and create a blend of metal riffs and disco grooves. The artist must have felt that the result was too sweet in sonic terms so, in order to continue the line of the project’s previous releases, he injected these ten pieces with a tad of rot, a healthy cynicism and a sprinkling of vitriol, yet the such-themed lyrics are merely the rules of Sköld’s runic-encrusted game.
Which is why the aggressive lullaby of opener “Dirty Horizon” whose skronk seems rather invigorating and the spanked-up finale of “Goodbye” whose infectious refrain and bluesy guitar solo will linger as an aftertaste must meet in the middle of the record, on the heavily solemn doo-wop – yes, here’s a crazy mélange of genres – that drives “Love Is A Disease” and the taut “As Above So Below” that should remind Tim’s production of “Tainted Love” for Marilyn Manson. While “Silicon Dreams” bristles with a doomsday electronica, a rapture-radiating rave runs through the throbbing veins of “Unspoken” to fill the song’s synthetic surface with a singalong chorus and an arresting six-string assault, and if the words of “The End Is Near” pick up where Lennon’s “Revolution” left off, thus track’s rhythm cuts even deeper – as deep as “Kill Yourself” suggests.
“Dies Irae” is a perfect, albeit quite murky, music for our times – the day of wrath, indeed – and this danse macabre can be what many of us need now.
****1/2