Search - Velvet Acid Christ :: Fun with Knives

Seeing People Ground Up in the Gears of This Anarchy

TastyBabySyndrome | "Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Lit | 01/20/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Velvet Acid Christ is like taking an introspective ride on the wild side of the chemical rainbow, only there isn't the wonderland you've always wanted to experience on the other side. Instead of an encapsulated merry-go-round delving into the happy holes within the synthetic rainbow, it a dark and foreboding place where the world is not your friend. Dark clouds rise from the corpses of old thoughts, denouncements roll in and threaten the security of thoughts, and the reality you want to know ends up being nothing but a brittle facsimile pretending to be a dream. And it makes you question, hurt, seethe, and want to ultimnately dismember the world one limb at a time. Yes, its themes like these that have flowed through those experimental skies, endowing Bryan Erickson with more than the ability to vox lyrics, to produce dancebeats on the bleak side of the temponic rainbow, and to sample sounds to help it cohesively come together. Its allowed him to help people feel an ocean of beats writhe through their body while endowing them with subjects on which to think, to feel, and to want to hurt things for.I've found myself partial to quite a few of VAC's albums, Bryan going through some experimentation on life while I, myself, went through the same "seek syndromes," and I've found myself marveling at some of the productions B. Erickson has made. He seems to understand how to utilize electronics to build both a temple to beat and to theme, allowing one to feel the song. He's also scoured many cinematic/ musical sources to find just the right fit when it comes to the crescendo of sound clips, and then there's the voxing he seems to stick with that makes it all-the-more bleak. When you listen to some of the songs he's built, his voice distorted in an oblivion of questioning and hating, he seems to manifest emotions in those dark lullabies that produce an essence of both hurt and pain. And that, atop all the other constructions, is possibly what I like the most about this under-appreciated artistic mind.Fun With Knives is something of a rollercoaster ride that wears teeth with feelings, taking you through a myopia of sensations on your way to understanding even more on Erikson's introspective journey. I honestly like the cold truth he gives in it and, oftentimes, the brutality in the journeys as he takes them. There are songs like "Icon" that seem to lash out under an electronically-based yet beautiful beat, producing themes that hate because the mind behind it feels like he, himself, has been hated. Then there are other gears turning this pulsating machine like "Fun With Drugs," with a "skin dripping" action getting into the drug utopia, and then there's the always interesting religion - hating sounds of the slower sonnets like "There is no God." The part I really enjoy the most, though; the darker, more wondrous, sounds I personally like, are also here and here with a vengeance. Yes, there are speed settings for the hatred inside this that go into maximum, like in "Speedball OD" and in the bile that runs out of it and doesn't bother to conceal itself. "I clean up your body parts with a vacuum cleaner" is perhaps the most tamed part of the song that gets me going, making me want top break a few things, and there's luckily more to hold my hand. "Apflux," or the "knife that will slice and dice your mind," mixes with songs like "Psycho," and then there's the title-track, "Fun with Knives." O yeah, it's a boat that takes a journey I personally liked taking.For anyone not wanting something objectionable, go buy some Enya and sit quietly in the corner because you're in the wrong place. This has violent places in it that are potholed and with pain, hate, and the barrage of other emotions that we all suffer from. It doesn't pretend not to be consumed by them, either, allowing the audience to sit and listen as they spill out of a mouth in which they were allowed to fester. Yeah, this is a trainwreck happening, it playing out in "realtime," and its an interesting experience to ingest because you can honestly relate to all of it - provided you don't kid yourself. And that's all we ever really want, isn't it, to stare at trainwrecks as we pass them by in order to make us feel alive?"

The most accessible of VAC's work...

Cognitive Dissonance | the 9th Layer of Hell | 12/13/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I've only listened to VAC for a little over a year now, but I've come to the conclusion that FWK is the transition album, where Brian (Disease Factory) moves from a harsher, noisier style to the more trance-induced technoflow of Twisted Thought Generator. An interesting side effect of said transition is basically what you see and what you get with this album.As the amazon reviewer said above, Fun With Knives doesn't really advance or shine amongst industrial music. It simply *is*... but that doesn't make it a bad album, or show any lack of effort. It is very accessible and seems to be a good starting album for up and coming fans of VAC or industrial in general. (My first was Neuroblastoma, which for some odd reason, I didn't really listen to much until *after* I got FWK.) Songs like Icon, and Decypher will ravage the floor for all you dance kiddies, while the darker sounds of Speedball OD (older VAC fans will remember this from somewhere else... :), Fun with Drugs, and Caught will keep the evil alive for people like me who like to scare pedestrians.Overall, Fun With Knives keeps VAC on the map and is a great listen with great production - hence the 4-star rating... but VAC has done better, with the more raw Calling ov the Dead, and the more evolved and even better-produced (my personal favorite) Twisted Thought Generator. So get this album, but don't stop there - pick up the others as well. All of them are well worth it if you're an industrial fan."