Genocide Organ – Remember

December 1997 • Tesco Organisation

I should admit right off the bat that in general, when it comes to noise, power electronics isn't my favorite. I usually find the sound too irritating to listen to, or too abrasive, and it's hard to respect and take seriously many of the groups with their often "controversial" thematics and imagery. Genocide Organ is one of those typical groups, but the one album by them I've heard—Remember—is actually quite good, and a heck of a lot more listenable than most other power electronics I've heard.

Perhaps one of the better things about the album is its deviation from what one might call the "typical" power electronics sound; Remember is often very noisy but isn't as grating or uncomfortable to listen to like most other tracks I've heard. Some of the tracks are more akin to your typical harsh Wolf Eyes sound. Where they aren't, it doesn't seem too terribly different from, say, Whitehouse, with heavy reverb, stretches of droning distortion, and shouted, incomprehensible vocals. Unlike Whitehouse or some other death industrial, though, this is a relatively "safe" album; it never really does anything to surprise or scare the listener (unless you find the vocals or samples scary, which I don't really).

The album provides a lot of the sampling that is common in the genre, too; mostly spoken word in German. I like samples when they're incorporated well into the rest of the sounds and here they're done very well, often sitting in the background and adding to the atmosphere rather than overpowering the noise. However, they are a touch overdone at points, especially when repeated constantly through an entire track.

I will have to ding the album a bit for being way too long at nearly an hour and a half (especially the 2007 re-release, which pushes it well over the two-hour mark), as there's only so much power electronics I can take at once; when re-listening for this review I was ready to be done only halfway through. Fortunately, the album is actually pretty diverse within the genre and the tracks don't sound too similar (again, incorporating some harsh noise, death industrial, and drone elements), so even when listened to as background music the album does a pretty good job of staying relatively interesting. However as I said before there isn't much surprising to be found here, so it can't often grab the listener's attention, and it's probably best listened to in chunks.

Regardless, since Genocide Organ is now considered to be one of the more important power electronics groups and Remember has got a pretty good thing going for it, the album should probably be given a spin by most noise listeners; but again I would advise sticking with the original track list as the reissue is a bit too much to handle and the bonus tracks aren't really anything special.

7