Fade Kainer’s fingerprints are found in some of the most interesting experimental extreme music of the past few years. This is not just through the mighty Batillus, whose 2013 album Concrete Sustain was one of the best specimens of industrial doom has offered in recent memory. His presence in Theologian‘s ambient/noise/industrial opus Pain of the Saints and Vampillia‘s take on avantgarde music with Alchemic Heart are just instances where he has been a catalytic factor, something that also reinvigorated one of the bands he has joined lately, Tombs, and their excellent work in the All Empire Falls EP.
Despite the many projects he is part of, Kainer still has a lot of different sides to explore, and his latest vessel in this course is his solo project Statiqbloom. This is not an entirely new project, and previous releases, in the collaborative work with Zex Model, and the self-released Black Mirrors and Mask Visions Poison, give a taste of what to expect. But the case with Blue Moon Blood feels different, it being a full-length record and also coming from Translation Loss Records.
It is a difficult task to vary your style as a musician and as a composer, and there are these treats that make someone almost instantly recognizable. With Kainer it is all about the surroundings of the music, the ambiance and aura that radiates in his works. There is this essential dark ambiance that comes rushing in from the very start of this trip and remains attached until the end. It is an industrial world after all, a domain established by Godflesh and Ministry and carried on by their sonic descendants.
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The joy of repetitive beats is turned inside out, and instead of the joy of monotonous progression, a cold vibe creeps in, sketching a dystopia of mechanized brutality. This is an element that grants a majestic quality to Blue Moon Blood in the form of a hybrid ritualism, making aspects of the sound appear massive, or by simple synths ideas being stretched to their dissonant edge. A delicate balance, and Kainer does not allow this spell to break, by paying great attention to detail, something that inherently found in the background of all his records. Everything has its place there, crafting an ensemble of mechanical sounds, each intricate to the nature of the track, and all together working like a well-tuned machine to bring the track to life in the most elaborate representation.
But Statiqbloom is not a project that simply follows the footsteps of Kainer’s past works. And the distinct difference here is that the tracks are insanely catchy. By acquiring elements of EBM, Kainer is able to infect the core of Statiqbloom with hooks, and do so without jeopardizing the bleak vision he is presenting. The rhythmic patterns are absolutely intoxicating, the chorus of tracks like “Black Walks Eternal” are thunderous, and the synth melodies of “Crooked Lines” are pure earcandy. Further exploring different implementations, a new wave, post-punk attitude blossoms from the vocal delivery, with a dramatic, but also slightly tongue-in-cheek characteristic, inherent in the works of Killing Joke. It can be deduced that we are seeing a different side of Kainer, exposed without tempering too much with his established identity. Considering that the project is enhancing its live performances, collaborating with Denman C. Anderson, known from the awesome, dark electronic project Semita Serpens, it can be expected that a live experience of Blue Moon Blood is going to be a handful to cope with.
