CD Review

Siva Six – “Rise New Flesh”

By Marcus Pan

Easily one of the darkest records in the EBM genre to cross my desk in some time, Siva Six's Rise New Flesh on Decadence Records this year is a brooding series of dark elements strung like black pearls on a pirate's necklace. Formed by Noid and Z (keys & vox respectively), the cover art to the lyrics to the ensembles are all imbued with a deep cynicism held aloft by melancholy and paranoia.

Taking lessons from the old school hard hitters (Armageddon Dildos, Laetherstrip, Skinny Puppy(1)), Siva Six opens their ten track with the best of the album – Fire Walks With Me. The lyrics have "goth poetry" written all over them – except it's very good as opposed to the cliche-ridden shit you find on today's youthful blogs. Fire Walks With Me is my favorite here, and unfortunately using it to open the album leaves me wanting more as the tracks progress. It's a "blew their wad early" sort of feeling.

All the following tracks of Rise New Flesh are good – sometimes quite good. But even with the driving bass laden beats of Streetcleaner or the steady brooding melancholy of Another Dead World, I'm not moved as much as by the opening highlight that was Fire Walks With Me. This is a difficult review to write because there's nothing bad about the album, but nothing jumps out at me either. It kind of just plays with a "heard it before" quality.

Siva Six is a fine duo and I'd like to see more of their darkness make it out. The only caveat is that, while you can say they're some of the darkest of the bunch, they're still in a bunch. That makes it easy for me to say that if you like EBM/industrial, you'll enjoy Rise New Flesh. But it also makes them get stuck in a clump with a bunch of other folks who do the same thing. Rise New Flesh is a good album – not one of the best and not one of the worst – but other than Fire Walks With Me there aren't many in the way of standout tracks that help them claw up over the previously mentioned clump.

(1) See Legends #121 for a review of their Back + Forth Vol. 5 release.