BLITZKRIEG BABY – Genocidal Sextasy LP

In a year already defined by society coming to a standstill at the behest of a global pandemic, the arrival of Blitzkrieg Baby’s new LP Genocidal Sextacy commands rumination with an acerbic irony. Since the early 2000’s Norwegian artist Kim Sølve has carried forth Blitzkrieg Baby as a timely exploration of humanity’s hubris and callousness, a bleak and pessimistic trawl through the dregs of mankind’s selfishness and cruel arrogance that paradoxically operates as a cathartic confrontation of 21st century existential dread.

Rooted in both the sequenced thump of EBM with the dusty specter of death industrial grime and dark ambient unease, Kim Sølve and his collaborators (Bjeima, The Right Reverend Mr. B, Amyeric Thomas, and Frederic Arbour) have crafted a steady and unhurried oscillation, rhythmic tracks mirroring a sluggish dance of the dead clamoring for reconciliation that never manifests. Everything from Laibach’s militaristic stringency to even Alice Cooper’s gallows theatrics signify themselves over the albums eleven tracks.

Whether audiences in this fraught year find Genocidal Sextacy as a confrontational purge of relentless trauma or a too-close-for-comfort slap in the face of extremely timely anxiety will perhaps depend on the person. In the meantime, Blitzkrieg Baby have provided another tough pill to swallow that will no doubt leave fans of uncompromising industrial and extreme electronics clamoring for another fix.