Imagine if Joy Division met the violin parts from The Who’s Baba O’Reilly - that’s the overall soundscape of this album. The haunting violin strains from almost-mononymous violinist L Shankar give an exotic Asiana feel to the otherwise deeply Goth sound as developed by the band, exploding right out of the gate with a memorable and evocative opening to the first track The Cutter. This builds to a climax that sounds like it involves synth strings; none are credited, however, so I suspect these are actual strings.
Without Shankar’s contribution, the tracks would probably be more of the same kind of darker goth New Wave stuff, all heavy drums and thick mixing (although there’s a refreshingly incongruous percussion piece, possibly marimbas or xylophone, during My White Devil). The lyrics make heavy reference to knives and cutting, to personal dissolution (“When I came apart I wasn't made of sand” and “Am I the half that’s whole?” from Clay, for example), to the Jacobean tragedy of The Duchess of Malfi (My White Devil) and also some rather terrible puns. “Am I the suck in cess?” in Clay, for example, or “I’m pining for the pork of the porcupine” in the title track. The nature of Ian McCulloch’s singing is such that this doesn’t matter - I've mentioned the concept of “Goth Rock Fridge Magnet Poetry” before, and this is kind of that, but it’s the mood rather than the words that are important here.
This is one of those albums I had to listen to twice, since it’s very easy to miss a lot if you have it on in the background rather than actively listen, and has a tendency to blend together into one moody whole; I loved the sound of it and although it’s probably no less produced than the previous Def Leppard album, was a lot darker and moodier, not MTV glossiness.
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