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Double your pleasure with Pleasure Forever!

Darren Clavadetscher | Los Angeles, CA United States | 06/09/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Pleasure Forever, formerly the Slaves, have crafted a masterpiece of dark, cabaret rock. From the initial, haunting piano on Goodnight, comes an invitation to a record that is a melange of seeming contradictions: raw and melodic, angry and joyous, driving and meditative. Any Port in a Storm alternates between Neil Young, Guns and Roses, David Bowie, and the Doors, while being a wholly original hybrid of all of them. Meet Me in Eternity becomes downright Satanic with its invocations to Rise echoing over and over, the band building to an orgasmic frenzy before the end of the almost 8 minute song. The album is a relentless and overwhelming carnival of sinful pleasures that damns the prepackaged safety of most hardrock with its overwhelming quality."

The perfect soundtrack for your next Bacchanalian orgy.

Darren Clavadetscher | 04/30/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Excess. Decadence. Sleaze. There's one heck of a shindig going on down in Hell, and these guys are the house band.The name Pleasure Forever is a befitting title for these guys (who rose from the ashes of the revered art-noise-punk SF group the VSS and was going about with the moniker Slaves for awhile), as this entire album is an exercise in gloriously overindulgent debauchery, from the gleefully morose lyrics to the layered and darkly baroque instrumentation. This, of course, is nothing new - countless other groups have wallowed in the post-modern nihilistic haze, after all (Pall Jenkins, I'm looking at you) - but none of them have ever seemed to enjoy it this much. This is evident from the very first track "Goodnight," which employs a lurching, death-waltz piano, appropriately sinister guitars, and even the occasional party-favor whistle to effect a sleazy cabaret atmosphere as vocalist Andrew Rothbard moans "If you're learning to burn out fast/might as well do it with smashing panache" (which is probably one of the best self-encapsulating lines ever) in his slyly sinister drawl.Of course, it's not all laid-back sleaze. The third track "Meet Me In Eternity" pairs a jumpy piano and droning guitar noise in its hushed opening, whipping itself into an arena-rock frenzy whose drunken sing-song chorus of "ba-ba-da-da" invokes a vaudevillian Ten-era Pearl Jam more so than it does the dark one-way ticket to entropy its lyrics suggest. Similarly, the fifth track "You and I Were Meant to Drown" is reminiscent of a big-rock stompfest, where the guitar drones menacingly before breaking down into a swirling, serpentine mass, snaking and twisting through Rothbard's two-packs-a-day vocals.This was perhaps one of the few albums I have listened to that has left me feeling utterly dirty after listening through it, and left eager for more. The music is dark, but never morose; a lot of times, its downright sexy, in that desperate one-night stand-in-a-filthy-cheap-motel type way. And that is the charm of the album; you never imagine these fellows taking it all too seriously, more so than you can see a devilish smirk on their faces as they try to decide whether they want to rock you or get it on with you. Smashing panache, indeed."