Fame Fatale, the pun that serves as the title of NER\OGRIS’s second album, already sets the thematic scene: overexposure via social media and all the pitfalls of this digital world which, ultimately, are leading us to our own extinction. Instant gratification, online hate, addiction, our relationship with our own image and ‘popularity’, but above all the ubiquity of misinformation in what should be a wellspring of knowledge: these are the ingredients that fuel the observations in Fame Fatale.
The duo’s music is also built on paradoxical tensions between old-school dark electro influences and a desire for modernity, traces of analogue life to breathe spirit into digital coldness, as well as a desire for pop elements – smooth and easy to like – alongside industrial harshness. The opening track, Calls, with its exotic organic percussion, set the scene by blurring the lines with its combination of radically contrasting textures and aesthetics, and the prominence of its melody. As the press kit puts it: Skinny Puppy meets Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
Let’s be serious for a minute: when you listen to Fame Fatale, your thoughts do tend to turn more often to the Vancouver pioneers. And more than the nightmares of Nivek Ogre, cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel, it’s above all the mechanical precision of Frontline Assembly that really stands out, combined with that ability to turn ‘tracks’ into proper songs, with structures that are easy to take in and choruses that stick in your head. Since I Am the Shadow – I Am the Light, released in 2023, Kai Neugebauer, alias KaiN (composer), and Tino Claus, alias TinoC (lyricist), have refined their formula. Antithese is a prime example of this: NER\OGRIS is more aggressive, whilst the sound has gained in power and the vocals take centre stage more than ever.
Fame Fatale is a succession of intense tracks in which a range of emotions are spat into our ears by TinoC’s bitter growls. Conscious of its EBM and industrial influences, the album also has a distinctly contemporary feel (it is closer, for example, to the work of 2nd Face than the psychedelic fetishism of Fïx8:Sëd8).
As well as the in-your-face tracks like A View and La Hora el Ganador, which really stick in the mind, we also relish the more atmospheric touches, such as the layers of sound in Unter Menschen, the melancholy of Glowing in the Dark, the sort of sinister harpsichord sound in Dulcimer... and above all Graves, which, halfway through the album, serves as a haunting interlude introduced by Vincent Price’s voice in The Tomb of Ligeia – a gothic touch we always appreciate!
Fame Fatale lacks neither body nor soul. A bitter and pessimistic observation, it blends ghosts and machines, rage and melancholy, dehumanised coldness and embodied jolts. NER\OGRIS proves to be more adventurous, more well-rounded and more ambitious here, capable of asserting his personality whilst demonstrating formidable efficiency and precision: the material is rich, but your bum will also attest to its danceable quality!
