Fleisch & Waffeln - Meat EP

As one of the least vegetarian figures in the entire dark-scene, as well as something of a fanboy for any band trying to recapture the spirit of old-school EBM a la Nitzer Ebb, 242 and various less well-remembered names, the chance to review the 6-track 'Meat EP' for a Danish band who's name translates to 'Meat and Waffles' wasn't one I wanted to miss. The bands name and their minimal online presence seemed to indicate a certain sense of humour, so I loaded the tracks into my player innocently expecting a form of irreverent tomfoolery set to an old-school body beat.

Sucks to be wrong, doesn't it? The first track 'Den Glade Emo' (The Happy Emo) consists of a four minute synth pulse that doesn't even switch chords for the duration of the song, a crude drumloop that resembles one's first experiments with rhythm programming and an overly-reverberated vocal grunt that resembles an angry drunkard in an underpass. Maybe there's some out there that believe that a purposely lo-fi production is in some way indicative of 'retro chic', but in an era when anyone can acquire a passable demo-standard studio via a Computer Music covermount disc, standards have risen and this does not meet them.

It's only when we get to the third track, the appropriately named 'Dans Med Stovlen Din' ('Dance With Your Boots') that we finally begin to hear what this project could achieve if they'd attempted a little more quality control. Whilst it's still noticeably lo-fi in quality, it's a forceful, dynamic delivery at least hints that this collective could yet fill dancefloors if they could only manage to get all the knobs and faders in more-or-less the right position come production time.

Another slip-up occurs when we get to 'Maskinsvin' - the track is mastered (?) at a noticeably lower volume than the rest of the EP, neutralising any impact it may of had. Whilst the final song 'Robotlullaby' at least makes a effort to combine a filter sweep, processed female vox and a five-minute duration, it's still a thing of patchy delights at best. There are still hints that this project might yet dish up an appetising take on vintage EBM at some later stage (and there are some promising newer tracks on their Facebook and MySpace pages), the 'Meat EP' itself is simply in too raw a state to be fit for public consumption.
Mar 23 2012