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Army of lovers: Master series

11/19/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Gonna ride the bullet.... Yeah this is crazy but best music group in the world ever have been. Master series is uncredible album. Give 5 stars to this album......................."

Swedish disco extravaganza

Daniel J. Hamlow | Narita, Japan | 03/05/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"One of the overlooked acts amid the field of grunge acts that started popping out like wildflowers in the early 1990's is the Swedish techno/disco group Army Of Lovers. Led by two males, Alexander Bard and Jean-Pierre Barda, and female vocalist La Camilla, this group took traditional disco, Stock-Aitken-Waterman type bubblegum beats, Queen-like operatics, spoken French lyrics, and melded computerized effects and other samples atop it for a "disco extravaganza," as mentioned in "Ride The Bullet." There are nods to the O'Jays "get on the love train" and soulful vocals by La Camilla.Alexander Bard has sings and plays sitar on "Supernatural" while he or Jean-Pierre intones a set of lines preceding the Army Tabernacle Choir. A spiritual transformation comes into play when the choir sings "heaven is here, Glory Hallelujah, heaven is here." This is a more laid back tune made operatic by the choir."Viva La Vogue" features guest female vocalists while La Camilla's singing and the drum and keyboard arrangements make this alike Deee-Lite. Very danceable.The funky "Shoot That Laserbeam" has lead vocals by La Camilla, and lacking the heavily laden instrumentals, also has a brief whistling of the Andy Griffiths theme. And, as in some songs here, has French monologue. A more steady marching pace-type funk can be detected in "Hey Mr. DJ."After a brief fanfare, "Love Me Like A Loaded Gun" begins with this cheeky monologue: "It took God six days to create a perfect world. On the seventh day he rested. That was a big mistake. From the seventh day, we took over." Take over they do with a drum and bass synth-dominated uptempo dance number with some French monologue.The S-A-W techno of "Baby's Got A Neutron Bomb" supported by some brass ups the BPM. La Camilla has some badly mangled Japanese monologue mistranscribed phonetically in the booklet. Translated it goes: "How fun, how cute/how fun, to dance with me [masculine]/how fun, how cute/how fun, are you there?""Scorpio Rising" is another danceable number dealing with astrology, a French monologue horoscope, and some exotic Middle Eastern-like vocals sounding like Ofra Haza.The silliest song is "Dog," combining the nonsense chants from "Hooked On A Feeling" and a theme of a lost dog mirroring the B-52s' "Quiche Lorraine," complete with a silly looped dog yapping, an opera diva. It ends just as ridiculously, "And the entire population of the universe says hallelujah," followed by a sample of a religious choir singing "Hallelujah." What, did the dog die or something?The haunting "My Army of Lovers" veers towards Pet Shop Boys territory, with La Camilla's intoning the reminiscing words amid pianos and airy synths and steady drum programming. After a bombastic fanfare, in the bass-synth heavy mid-paced "I Am The Amazon," La Camille recites the title over and over, the only words save some Arabic and Swedish words and some looped female gasps. Another song with repetitive words over a steady drum and bass beat is "Planet Coma 3 AM" which has "Dance dance dance/well well well" repeated along with a quietly spoken deity-like "I am the light."Most of the tracks maintain a steady dance floor atmosphere, and the exploration of sci-fi, religious, and just plain invitation to dance themes make Army Of Lovers a sadly forgotten oddity in 90's music. Their followup, Massive Luxury Overdose, is even better!"