The prolific
Justin Broadrick unleashes another sonic masterpiece with this noisy, unsettling excursion into an instrumental, industrial nightmare. Either post-apocalyptic or just pre-apocalypse,
Reading All the Right Signals Wrong is a four-song cycle of destruction, squalor, and distortion lasting three-quarters of an hour. While many listeners might simply find their ears assaulted,
Broadrick's fans and those who can appreciate aggressive audio sludge underscored with often beautiful mournful melodies will approve. The album is at heart an unrelenting barrage on the senses and a subconscious criticism of humankind's destruction of nature. Since the songs fit together like a puzzle and the album is a concept piece, it makes sense to briefly examine each song here. Opener "Right Signal," with its wailing high horn sounds and background grime, feels like the soundtrack to a
David Lynch art installation or
Vangelis'
Blade Runner score filtered through some deathly dark drugs. It's the soundtrack of failing nuclear power plants about to burst while mutant creatures scurry around the surrounding wasteland. On first listen to a song this bleak and punishing but named "Right Signal," you have to wonder what the next song will bring when it's titled "Wrong Signal." What it brings is a crescendo of metallic fuzz, moaning guitars, sound effects that recall alien aircraft whooshing away, and a background of lamenting synthetic strings that eventually find their way through the buzzing layers before a final fadeout. One might call it Hell's version of
the Velvet Underground. "Stop at Red," reminiscent of
Krzysztof Penderecki, is more quiet, but it's a disturbing quiet, with icy echoing sounds, guitar throbs, amplifier hum, and sounds like a dentist's drill on helium painting the scene of some desolate arctic mine shaft. Though its chiming guitars fall into each other like clanging church bells, closer "Green" offers little relief, with effects that sound like downed power lines and a saw taken to the inner workings of a piano pensively suggesting evil is still lurking around the corner.
Reading All the Right Signals Wrong might be a battering affair, but the stillness afterwards makes listeners feel they've just gone through an industrial detoxification. It's a compelling modern symphony reminding of the darkness that often comes with blind urbanization. ~ Tim DiGravina