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For Greater Good
For Greater Good

Posted: Monday, February 02, 2009
By: Matthew Johnson
Features Editor

While it's true that For Greater Good's Iz and Samdevos draw on ambient, industrial, and electronic themes and formulas that go back as far as Coil's first album, if not before, their self-titled debut puts together familiar synthesizer loops, choir samples, and rhythmic sequences in a way that sounds fresh and powerful, adding neo-classical elements, including live violins, that bring a new sense of majesty to the world of grim soundscape. Album opener "Ossetian Ossuary" starts off as a fairly standard piece of grim ambient texture, with moody keyboards backed by a vaguely industrial clatter, but as multiple layers of strings fill in the sound it takes on a new character, somber and grandiose rather than merely bleak. Likewise, "Distress" starts off as a deliberately primitive take off on electronica resembling Coil's proto-IDM period, but once the bombastic violins join the clanking loops and digitized breakbeats, things make a sudden shift from drugged out robot dance party to cybernetic battle hymn. The Coil comparisons are perhaps inevitable, and further cementing them are this album's two lyrically-driven pieces, both of which emphasize vocalist Samdevos' similarity to the late John Balance: a little raw and raspy, but melodic and capable of both madness, as on "Le Jugement du Roi en Jaune," which sets sung ravings inspired by Robert W. Chambers and H.P. Lovecraft to strains of synthesized brass, and surprising poignancy, as on the bittersweet "Rush Hour." Unlike Coil, however, Iz and Samdevos are both willing and able to escape the confines of their own internal mysticisms to make more topically-inspired music. While the news commentaries on Guantanamo Bay don't add much subtlety to the grim ambient loops of "Love Your Terrorist," they make their point at the very least. Lovely and understated both as a historical meditation and as pure sound, "Dawn Over Dachau" is perhaps the most affecting piece on an album that's already overflowing with evocative compositions. A sort of hymn to the victims of the Nazi concentration camps, it buries hints of screaming beneath an achingly beautiful wash of synthesized choirs for an effect that's somehow both sentimental and sobering. That paradoxical combination of effects is in fact a good description of the album as a whole, the stark industrial elements in a constant push-and-pull struggle with the deliberately emotive strings, pianos, and vocal melodies. It makes for a listening experience that's intense without being overwhelming, emotional without being melodramatic, and it may be just the thing to bring more casual industrial fans into the dark ambient fold.