Released:
1996, One F Music/Tic Tic Bang, BANGCD022

Website:
Battery 9

'Strop' is mostly aggressive, high-energy, and if Paul Riekert and company slow it down for a few songs, well, it's still aggressive.

Hearing that Battery 9 are releasing a new album on July 1, from Gallo, I pulled out my Battery 9 CDs to recharge my own batteries with the power of Paul Riekert and B9.

I tell you, this is not music for all moods, it is not for Carike's birthday party. But it is for livening up a room when you feel in a hard and grim but mentally okay mood, but not depressed. It's for time when you need to flex muscles, even if you aren't wearing black.

After the attention grabbing opener 'Kiss the Machine', then 'Cross No More Rivers' (a lovely ballad B9 style), and the panicking chain saw sound of 'Scream', the album turns to a threatening sonic landscape with chanted vocals, heavy unstoppable rhythms, and occasional eruptions of power.

'Strop' comes from mysterious factories where the sounds of B9 are born, like the Krell machinery in the film 'Forbidden Planet' that has been running and repairing itself for tens of thousands of years, and whose purpose is unfathomable. But the machinery sounds cool.

At times, 'Strop' sounds right out a futuristic film noir world like 'Blade Runner', or some other film based on Philip K. Dick's works. But again, 'Strop' is not depressing, but rather puts the mind in gear, sometimes third, sometimes fifth, and it moves the flesh.

Tape loops, machine sounds, guitar, and percussion of hitting various objects, usually big metal things, sound effects, and Paul make up the Battery 9 sound. It's a good one.

The ominous vocals all make for varied and stimulating listening. To get fancy in deep jargon, this is a musical form that in lesser hands could turn monotonous, but Riekert's hands work in the B9 factory. The B9 musos present beat-driven and well-decorated songs, and they don't repeat themselves or get boring like listening to a two-cycle engine or a boy band.

The CD closes with a brief and driving tune, full of B9 swagger and justified musical arrogance... but stick around for the hidden track.

Okay, I'm recharged now, only needing more B9, the new one.

-- Kurt Shoemaker, SA Rock Digest, July 2002

Info supplied by John Samson and the Official Battery 9 website, June 2002.