Suicide Commando have gone through many phases since their beginnings in the nineties. After two very good albums in recent years on a more gloomy note than usual (reviewed in our columns here and here), the project who has established himself as one of the most popular and enduring in dark electro returns this year with an EP entitled Final Stage, a name which naturally refers to his first album Critical Stage from 1994 ; And indeed, five of the tracks from the first opus are recognisable, but here reworked by the Belgian artist, keen to return to the core of his music but at the stage of evolution he has reached today.
The recipe, for all that, doesn't vary from what made Suicide Commando such a success: we recognise the simple melodies that haunt us, the techno-inspired beats that skilfully punctuate the nightmare, Johann Van Roy's saturated vocals that slowly distil their disturbing refrains, the mechanical universe with no escape. What has changed, however, is the depth of the sound: while the sound of the new versions is unsurprisingly of better quality, which suits the tracks very well, it has been greatly enriched with synthesiser layers that make the tracks more fluid, and sometimes with more organic sounds, and the vocals are much more audible than on the original versions.
Is it better this way? The answer is that it obviously depends on taste, but also on the tracks. We enjoy Where do we go from here? [Final stage] for its danceable, anxiety-inducing effectiveness and the stabbing blows it inflicts on us, as well as the alternative version at the end of the EP, De Weg, this time with lyrics in Flemish - incidentally the first Suicide Commando track in its native language ; and yet we still feel we've lost something compared to the 1994 version, where the anguish rose more slowly and insidiously, creeping into the periphery of our consciousness, the instrumental in the foreground giving a more dehumanised dimension. Suicide Commando, on the other hand, manages the feat of making Fate even better than the original version: very close to the original, Fate [Death is coming ... again!] brings us back to this inexorably approaching threat, but with the addition of samples that make the track more alive, giving us the impression of being lost and crushed by the implacable mechanics. Generally speaking, Final Stage's sound universe is darker and stickier; the tracks are more fluid and exude all the more madness. The peak is reached on Necrophilia [Body to Body]: where the original remained too messy, the Final Stage version becomes an unstoppable, monstrously danceable hit; the added high-pitched tones and the vocal sample in the background are creepy and desirable.
Final Stage is certainly not an album where you'll have been very surprised: you already know the tracks and the new versions fit in with the style developed by Suicide Commando in recent years. Nevertheless, the transformation is skilful and pleasing.
