I didn’t pick this out for its title but it did make me laugh. All the nonsense about being allowed to hug people in a country where people don’t hug each other represents a normal level of absurdity. Sectlinefor will know about all this as they are British-based, and with a history of track titles like “George Campbell’s Wife Cooks the Best Lasagne” and “Jesus, Elvis and Lana Walk into a Bar”, they clearly have a sense of the absurd themselves, not to mention a sense of humour. Their own summary of “Kissing Strangers During an Outbreak”, their third album, is this: “Gene Kelly dances in monochrome on a rainy street corner, until massive metallic riffs rupture the screen, unleashing a downpour of industrial beats and warped, sugar-sweet melodies injected with hysteria”.
And so to this work of self-proclaimed industrial alternative wtf metal. Well I reckon Major Parkinson has just met Atrox. A bit of hip hop, a strong dose of dark electro, an annoying catchy rhythm and oceans of insanity accounts for some of it. If they’d said, as bands do, that this is for fans of Sparks then I would believe it. We’re either in the theatre or the lunatic asylum. Our duo of vocalists have lost the plot. The dark electro beat goes on. “Spoiler Alert – Everyone Dies in the End” starts off with a punchy electro rhythm but the high-pitched wailings take us through this car crash. “There’s a fucking pubic hair in the bathroom, it’s grossing me out, someone has to do something” is hardly Shakespearean prose but this lyric from “Snort My Love Through Your Nose” is Sectlinefor’s answer. Narrative and dark electronic rap override the wall-pummelling beat. Now it’s like a musical adaptation of the Young Ones. Don’t expect anything too mature, or even anything mature at all. Dark synth waves run through the back of “Six Minute Abs”. Again it’s like a stream of consciousness fronted by madmen. “I can get you anything you want – I’m the magic man” goes the lyric. Sectlinefor can do what they want and do it, especially vocally and lyrically. The angry sounding man on “Babies Come from Trees” could easily be Alexei Sayle but it isn’t. In the middle of all this a gothic style beat, rock guitar and a childlike front. Not normal, then. The struggle continues with the industrial “Hydration Party” before the title song comes along. As songs about relationships go, this is one of the more unconventional variety. Unlike anything that’s gone before, it has power and continuity. It’s symphonic, heavy, electro-industrial and very dark of course. The start of “Double Blue Tick of lol” took me back to the days Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. I really liked the hypnotic narrative, and dreamily dark beat. It’s a good end.
Without doubt Sectlinefor offer something different. It also has something very familiar in its 80s electro, the later electro-industrial feel of Front Line Assembly, Wumpscut and some of the more melodic gothic artists like Clan of Xymox. At the risk of sounding too po-faced over something which was basically a laugh while being sinister at the same time, the most striking feature is the theatrical vocals and lyrics. I liked the constructs of the lyrical and choral narrative (Christ, now we’re getting serious) which helped the flow but all the grotesquerie and the cleverness of the lyrics passed me by a little. To be truthful, although it was impossible not to be aware of the vaudeville flamboyance in this musical house of madness, it was the dark electro which kept my attention and attracted me most about this album.
(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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