Album Review: Emigrate - "Silent So Long"

2014 has summarily been both the year of the side project and the year of the industrial revolution (pardon my co-opting of the phrase,) so it seems remarkably apropos that the year should just about wrap up with Emigrate’s “Silent So Long,” the second side album from Rammstein’s Richard Kruspe.

Now, Emigrate isn’t totally down the same dingy alley as their parent band, but they share a lot in common.  Kruspe and by extension his band channel the same kind of industrial metal leanings that made Rammstein the world-leading chart topper they’ve been over the years.  Kruspe’s lyrical themes also don’t often fall far from the tree, as “Silent So Long” catalogues the usual thematic suspects; disapproval, struggle, destruction and unbridled lust.  Now naturally, if you’re going to be composing songs that deal only in the sheerest veneer of sexual metaphor, who better to invite to the party than Peaches, who makes an appearance on the Euro-club inspired “Get Down.”

For all those similarities though, Emigrate also tests a few other waters and “Silent So Long” generally follows a road not so heavily laden with the bleak qausi-political drudgery that Rammstein trades in so well.  Indeed, the album’s most interesting song is “Rock City” featuring the one and only Lemmy Kilmister, but not for the reasons one would expect.  Rather, the combination of Kruspe’s musical leanings and Lemmy’s gravelly countenance come together in a weird sort of calculus that only works because it nearly doesn’t.  Rather than simply write a noisier Motörhead song or conversely attempt to have Lemmy sing some off-the-wall industrial piece, the two luminaries attempt to meet each other in the middle, which ends up with a song that sounds sort of like Lemmy covering Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish.”  He sounds mildly out of place, and that in itself is part of the spectacle; when was the last time Lemmy sounded like he didn’t belong, or like he was out of his comfort zone?  Anyway, “Rock City” is one of the album’s finer selections because it manages to hold together despite being composed of magnetically opposite poles.

But wait, there’s more!  “Silent So Loud” manages to strike a clever balance between the industrial we’ve all come to identify with and the modern conventions of electronic rock and pop.  Listening to the album’s opener “Eat You Alive,” there’s this nagging feeling like the Neptunes had an ethereal influence in how the song was produced.  Sure, the cut has that trademark Rammstein chug that also recalls the best days of Twiggy Ramirez, but it’s layered with greater care and accented with a gang chorus that pushes the downbeat more like an R&B tune.

Oddly enough for an album that pushes ahead so quickly with metal pounders like “Hypothetical” or “Rainbow,” some of the best moments are when Kruspe displays his more emotional side, as evidenced in the eerie disquiet of “Happy Times,” or the quiet desperation of “Born On My Own.”  The latter song is paired brilliantly with “Giving Up,” so that right when “Silent So Long” hits its emotional nadir, “Giving Up” comes back with a strong sense of defiance to regain footing and propel the rest of the record.

The only knock on this record is that there a couple songs that the narrative doesn’t really require.  Even with that though, they’re not bad songs (though the closer featuring Jonathan Davis is somewhat dry,) and at eleven cuts total it’s not like the album is turgid with filler material.

Said and done, “Silent So Long” may well be the best of the industrial records we’ll see this year, and can stand toe to toe with several other noteworthy releases.  While fans of Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein and Godhead will easily find value in its craft, it would be foolish for fans of other genres to pass the record by based solely on Kruspe’s primary career.  There’s a lot to like on this record and perhaps moreover, a lot of production to learn from.