CD, Black Rain, 2009
www.myspace.com/dexycorp
Dexy Corp_, the next, best thing in contemporary French industrial rock, make life difficult for a reviewer: objectivity, the most fundamental requirement of any journalistic endeavour, is swiftly discarded as the excellence bleeds through on their first album, “Fragmentation”.
Resultingly, I can’t help but to consider this recording a distillate of all the best aspects of mid-90s industrial sounds: the violence of Ministry or KMFDM’s guitar onslaught, coupled with sequencing that would make Nine Inch Nails proud, overlaid by a distorted barrage of vocals that wouldn’t seem out of place emerging from Nivek Ogre’s mouth, all given a polish with some smooth electronic work à la Frontline Assembly, and tied together with percussion that leaps spasmodically between drum’n’bass abstraction to bordering on the all-out insanity Atari Teenage Riot subjected its fans to. In fact, I shouldn’t be reviewing this album at all, based on the enjoyment I’m getting out of it, as I’d simply recommend it to any rivethead worth their combat boots as essential listening, and gloss over any flaws it might possess.
From the monumental opening track, “Overlord”, through gems like the brooding menace of “Faceless” and aural misanthropy of “Anhedonie”, there is hardly room to breathe on “Fragmentation”. It’s the industrial equivalent of a summer blockbuster: massive, overpowering and packed to the gills with clever effects.
But nostalgia for the forgotten face of industrial rock within a genre overdosing on pure electronics aside, Dexy Corp_ have a lot more to offer than just a combination of synthesizers and guitars: their attitude and approach are everything industrial music should be – dark, antisocial and definitely not something most parents would want their kids listening to. “Fragmentation” is a resurrection of the ideals of anarchism, anger and socio-political commentary that seems to have been forgotten by a generation that are too busy succumbing to society’s demands for security, convention and the capitalist dream…
[9/10]
— David van der Merwe