Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to discuss the charming, weird, wonderful, obscenely talented musical singularity that is Mr. Victor Love. If you don’t know who that is, then let me explain:
We start – a touch improbably – with 2000s industrial cyber brats, Dope Stars Inc. Purveyors of stone-cold classics like Bang Your Head, Lies Irae, and Many Thanks (plus my personal favourite oddity: Spider Claw), and possessor of a frontman who looks like Brian Molko grew his hair out and discovered industrial. They were always a bit of an acquired taste in my experience, but personally I have a soft spot for them the size of Dolly Parton’s hair. The aforementioned frontman is none other than Vittorio D’Amore – also (and better) known as Victor Love; because when you’re literally called Vittorio D’Amore, you don’t exactly have to go far for a stage name, do you?
[Side note: I find it absolutely fascinating/really annoying how, in everything I’ve read about Master Boot Record and Keygen Church over the last few years, I keep seeing people talk as if Victor Love just is an established name, with no reference whatsoever to the band that made it so: Dope Stars Inc. I know they weren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but come on: we wouldn’t have Master Boot Record – or Keygen Church – without them.]
Now, our man Victor always did like a side project. I make it seven(?) to date, not counting his many outings moonlighting with other bands, primarily on the production side of things, but frankly it could be far more. After all, we only know about the ones that escaped. The best known of them came about when, after over a decade producing OTT and increasingly nerdy industrial with Dope Stars, Love’s not-so-inner geek came to the fore and spake thus: “I mean, it’s fine…but what if you took all the humans and shit out of it all? Y’know, give a computer a chance to break into the industry for once.” From that question was born the ineffable, inimitable, and entirely dehumanised Master Boot Record. Allegedly the work of a single 486DX-33Mhz-64mb, who is, in its own words: “processing avant-garde chiptune, synthesized heavy metal & classical symphonic music”. After releasing a stream of albums (four in three weeks at one point!) onto an unsuspecting public and getting a very enthusiastic response, the scene was set for the next step of the Victor Love journey, and the next evolutionary phase in his unique approach to music.
Enter Keygen Church. Because Master Boot Record is all very well and good, but what if you threw in a hefty dose of ritual, and turned the dehumanised electronic into the quasi-religious dehumanised electronic, or as Love calls it, Computer Generated Ceremony? It’s a good question, and one that Keygen Church has already had a spirited stab at answering over two albums, and I have to be honest, my main question here is what exactly a third album adds to the two excellent albums we’ve already had out of this project. Don’t get it twisted, I love the concept (and both of the previous albums), but in the run-up to the release of this album, I have had some doubts as to how much more mileage there is in the concept, given how well Keygen Church have answered that question already.
Getting into the album itself, I am first and foremost delighted to say that having waited years for a solid metal album that has an organ and knows how to use it, I’ve now reviewed two in less than a month (Isenordal being the other one). I mean, it’s not a real organ in this case, but that’s just nit-picking at this point. There’s a whole discussion to be had about this, and how “real” any of it can be when it’s all come out of a computer (this is a surprisingly contentious subject on Encyclopaedia Metallum), but this review is already likely to be borderline thesis length, so for the purposes of this review: I can hear an organ, ergo there’s an organ.
The opener, Se Hai Timore Del Vero deposits you right in the middle of whatever the hell is going on, with a strong sound straight out of the gate, that I can only describe as “that point in an old school Gothic horror movie where things have just got really weird, our protagonist’s fate (and probably that of their love interest as well) hangs in the balance, and where the hell is that chanting coming from?!”. Which is a ludicrously specific reference point, but if you understand what I mean by it, it’ll help with the rest of the album. Promise.
From there, with the notable exception of Il Paradiso Dell’Anima (which is the resident epic, kicking everything up a notch or ten, and it’s superb to a degree I don’t really have words for), there isn’t really a huge amount of point in going through this track by track, because for the most part, there’s a vibe here that you either like or you don’t. Those of you familiar with Master Boot Record may recognise the phenomenon: you either like the concept and execution enough that a full album of it sounds like just the ticket, or you don’t, and you can’t imagine anything worse. And yes, it can get a bit repetitive and samey, but honestly for me, that’s part of the appeal: knowing the vibe, and there being plenty of it, without anything earth-shattering along the way.
And what is that vibe, exactly? Over multiple listens, my usual equation approach is going to have to put its big formula pants on today, in order to accommodate the many and varied different threads and influences at play here, but this is what the version in my notes looks like at this point in the review:
A Jekyll and Hyde-type pair of J.S. Bachs, on the piano and organ respectively
+Enya/Adiemus
+Carol of the Bells
+Hammer Horror
+Dies Irae*
+ Melodramatic metal (including but not limited to power/synth/black)
X Catholic Excess in general
÷ gothicky symphonic chiptune (video games)
[*The number of times I’ve had to check that this says Dies Irae, not Lies Irae is entirely too many, and it really doesn’t help that I’ve referenced both in this review. I’d leave it for my editor to sort out, but I’m not convinced he’s going to know what half of this is about any more than most of you will. I mean, there’s niche, and then there’s the musical output of Victor Love.]
Yes, I know, Enya. But I can explain. Believe it or not, she’s actually a surprisingly good technical reference point for some of what’s going on here, because you know that breathy, multi-layered choir feeling, that sounds like she’s harmonising with a hundred other people, who all sound suspiciously like Enya? That’s because they are. The only voice you’ll ever hear on an Enya album is…Enya. Her own vocal tracks are layered over and over again in production, to create the aforementioned effect. So: she’s actually harmonising with hundreds and hundreds of copies of herself, which feels very Keygen Church, let’s be honest.
The two sides of Bach comes out of the lovely Baroque tinkles that are anything but metal, which is interrupted by organ, guitar and synths channelling the darker, more Gothic, more bombastic end of Baroque, as seen on the previous Keygen Church album, 2021’s ░█░█░░█░█░█░. The effect here is very similar, but the two threads are better integrated (more on that later). Carol of the Bells, because much of this album has the same musical tension, and thus slight creepiness/discomfort that Carol of the Bells famously causes, and I think the rest is fairly self-explanatory. It’s gloriously over the top, hits a surprising number of distinctly non-synthesised reference points and cultural nuances for something that’s come straight out of a computer. And the weirdest part is, there are entire chunks here where you wouldn’t guess for a second are entirely synthetic. Possibly somewhat obviously, the heavier, more metallic elements are more likely to be obviously computer generated, and the synths go without saying, but it does create a slightly strange impression sometimes, of crazed organ, metal and synths literally gate-crashing the pretty, twiddly, straight Baroque bits, punctuated with the highest of High Church chorales.
This interplay between the heavy, delicate, and religious bombast isn’t new for Keygen Church, as it’s present on the previous two albums as well, but Nel Nome Del Codice represents a significant evolution of the concept. The first album, ░ ▒ ▓ █, was a relatively straightforward (certainly compared to this one) juxtaposition of High Church and Low Tech, where all elements were present in spades, but didn’t interact with each other a great deal. ░█░█░░█░█░█░ wove the two together more closely, but still gave all the disparate elements a lot of breathing room to be their own thing. The main thing that’s new this time around is that that sort of breathing room – to process all the component parts in their individual glory – is precisely what you don’t get on Nel Nome Del Codice. From the first notes of Se Hai Timore Del Vero, which deposit you in the middle of aural chaos with no preamble or context, this album barely pauses for breath as it pulls you along for the ride. Whereas you could dip in and out of the previous albums to some extent, Nel Nome Del Codice really demands to be taken as a single entity, or not at all – you complete the ritual in full, or you don’t: there’s no middle ground. And that’s consistent with the evolution of the project as a whole: each album in succession is bigger, more complex, more dramatic, more interwoven than its predecessor, as the Computer Generated Ceremony finds its feet, lays down tradition, and develops ever more pomp and circumstance along the way. The overall effect is either an ascent to divine ecstasy or a descent into madness, or quite possibly a heady combination of the two.
How you feel about all of that is possibly even more about personal taste than it usually is, because whatever else you can argue Nel Nome Del Codice is or isn’t, it’s not just A Lot, it’s the whole kit and caboodle quite frankly. Also, there’s a subjective element to how you perceive the overall vibe here, because I keep seeing Keygen Church referred to as video game music (which Victor has done a fair bit of elsewhere), but as a born, raised and lapsed Irish Catholic, while I get my video game vibe, the overwhelming impression is gloriously over the top, theatrical, flamboyant High Church. So your mileage may vary on multiple fronts, but whatever angle you’re coming at Nel Nome Del Codice from, it’s worth listening to at least once. If only because there’s so little out there that’s anything like this, that there’s no real way of knowing how you feel about it short of actually just listening to it. I love it, because of course I do: it’s my favourite musical madman, Victor Love; it’s weird; it mashes up things that have no business being mashed up together; it’s never knowingly subtle or understated, and quite frankly it’s a ride from start to finish.
(9.5/10 Ellie)
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