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Parade Ground
Rosary

Sleep Walking Records

Posted: Friday, December 07, 2007
By: Matthew Johnson
Features Editor

Brothers Jean-Marc and Pierre Pauly are perhaps best known for their vocal contributions to fellow Belgian act Front 242's legendary 06:21:03:11 Up Evil album, but their own project, Parade Ground has been releasing material sporadically for 25 years, even appearing on 1987's This is Electronic Body Music compilation. Their close relationship with Front 242 continues with Patrick Codenys producing Rosary, Parade Ground's first full-length album in two decades, but their styles couldn't be more divergent. Don't expect much in the way of techno or dance elements from this one. Stomping beats are few and far between, and even when they're present, as on "Windfall" and "Snail's Burial," they're hardly meant for the dance floor. Parade Ground's music doesn't make you feel like you're in the club; at best, it makes you feel like you're slaving away in a factory next door to a club. You can hear the beats, but they're muffled by the walls and nearly drowned out by the hums and clanks of machinery. While brooding vocals provide at least a hint of structure on such offerings as "Happy At All" and "Europe Side Down," the real emphasis here is on noisy textures and harsh, heavily processed loops. While the atmospheres the brothers Pauly explore on Rosary range from the battlefield brutality of "In the Line of Fire," with its marching rhythm and looped shrieks, to somber, almost classical dirges like "Stutter" and "Calvary," with their thickly distorted orchestral samples, it's all equally grim and oppressive. Adding to tension are numerous sudden cut-offs; although each song proper is separated by a brief snippet of music (entitled "Rosary I" through "Rosary XV," not unlike the "Suture" tracks on Chemlab's first album), these interludes don't smooth things out. Rather, they make the entire listening experience all the more jarring; you never quite get a chance to sink into the noise, because the noise, though always abrasive, keeps changing without warning. With its unrelentingly depressive imagery and pitiless sonic overloads, Rosary does a far better job evoking the actual horrors of warfare than similarly-themed acts who simply throw some Full Metal Jacket samples over a club beat. It's tough to find fault with that, but it's also tough to listen to for 70 minutes. Front 242 connections or not, Parade Ground's uncompromising artistic vision is simply too difficult for your average industrial club-goer. Aficionados of the more conceptual industrial music of Boyd Rice or In Slaughter Natives, on the other hand, will find much to appreciate in the Pauly brothers' particular brand of aural hopelessness.