Lenore Syndrome
Your Lips Taste Like Microchips
What Else?
Holding this disc in my hand, reviewing the song titles and lyric sheet prior to beginning the review, I was all set to hate and dismiss this album. With tracks entitled “Binary Insult,” and the title track, “Your Lips Taste Like Microchips,” “Oh dear,” I suspected, another post-whatever band with fetish for sci-fi matched with an utter dearth of ideas. On the initial listen, the tracks did little to dissuade me from an initial skepticism. Yet, on subsequent listens, the songs began to grow on me. Their sound, a raw mixture of punk squawking and no-wave chic provide a methamphetamine vision of some nearly realized dystopia. This is no stylized vision of the future that is all sex and cool technology but a raucous trip into a disquieting realm of paranoia and violence.
While the lyrics are mainly shouted or shrieked, as opposed to being sung, the songs hang together quite well owing no small debt to the rhythm section whose languid, loose and dynamic bass lines propel the songs along. Especially on a track like “Systems will Fail,” where the song pauses and only the bass keeps the pace with the synthesizer (sounding less like an instrument and more like a weakened respirator), to heighten the dynamics of the song.
At their best, the tracks on this release find a group with the talent to fuel their sci-fi obsessed lyrics, rife with paranoid imagery and a loathing for the future, the Lenore Syndrome are eager to set the soundtrack for when the shit goes down. While it is apparent the band still wears a few of their influences on their sleeves, one can certainly expect more and better things from this band in the future.
What Else Records: http://www.whatelserecords.com/
