After Alec Empire released his Jaguar EP earlier this year, this is already the second album release of previously unreleased material by him in a short amount of time, and we sure won't complain about this!
According to the info, this is an unreleased album from 1994, planned to be released on DHR and a step onwards from his Force Inc and Riot Beats releases. Also it was not intended to made up of "rehashed" older material and features tracks that were on dub plates he employed in live appearances at that time.
And it's not rehashed indeed!
The first two tracks sound familar, as they have their roots in tracks that have already been released on Force Inc, but it's quite clear we are going in a very different direction now; as they have a truly harsh and vicious sound aesthetic to them.
As if this wasn't stunning enough already, we get another treat as we go past these tracks:
Alec Empiere does (or did!) 4/4 Hardcore.
We know him for his 90s Breakcore activities,
but this here is real percussion-driven, sequencer-hectic, acid-bleepy, "Gabber bassdrum" Hardcore Techno!
The experimental underground side of it, mind you, we're not talking about Happy Dance music here.
These are the four pillars of this album then - distorted Breakbeats, Hardcore, Acid, and Techno; but on top of these pillars, a lot of experimentation is going on, and much more.
For example, tracks that predate certain "Doomcore Techno" tendencies by more than one decade.
At 20 tracks, there is plenty of material here (is this really purely the original unreleased album - or is it with added bonus tracks?), and surely something that will entice most people who are into hard or experimental music.
This album stands out for me due to at least 3 reasons:
1. It is really some of the most ferocious output of its era - or any era. While later "Speedcore", "Noizecore" or similar artists might have had more BPMs, screams, or 'white noise' in their releases, these tracks have a super hard and abrasive production, and are much more bloodthirsty because of this.
This is music as brutal as it can get, essentially.
2. Most of the tracks have a lot of atmosphere and emotion to them, something cosmic, melancholic, dreamy, bittersweet... (a feeling I somehow connect to looking at the nightsky while walking in Berlin at night... don't ask me why...) and which can't be found in other "hard" releases of that period.
3. And this brings us to point three: this is truly a unique release. It is singular, no one else did something like this, maybe not even Alec Empire himself.
Thus it's one of the great (re-) releases of 2023, and please make sure to check it out!
We wrote: "At 20 tracks, there is plenty of material here (is this really purely the original unreleased album - or is it with added bonus tracks?)"
Alec Empire provided us with some clarification on this.
All tracks were indeed considered for the "Gang War" release; the majority of tracks would've gone on a vinyl LP version with a runtime of approximately 80 minutes; and the remaining ones would have been put on an accompanying EP release with a chosen lead track.
Also, if you wondered where to put this album "chronologically"; it would've been released in 1994, when DHR just had started and the label's first EPs were being released; and therefore predates Alec Empire's "The Destroyer" album.
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