EWIGKEIT

He is an Englishman, a stickler for detail, fascinated by smoking Kazakh hashish and downloading Red Army marches. Who am I talking about?.. That's right -- James Fogarty, arguably one of the most intellectually equipped figures on the British scene. Having armed himself with the German alter ego of "eternity" (which is precisely what the name of his musical project translates to from German), he deftly sidestepped all the obstacles of the music business and presents us with his new, already fifth opus. "Conspiritus" is a meditation on the theme of global conspiracy. Are the catastrophes and calamities happening today truly spontaneous in nature? Is the madness brewing within society really that random? Or does that mysterious someone actually exist, playfully rearranging pawns on a massive board and deciding the fates of nations?.. As they say, the truth is out there, and it's unlikely that we, the rank and file, will ever learn it. An experimenter by nature, on "Conspiritus" James seems to straighten and smooth himself out against his own grain. The result turned out just like that -- ambiguous, stuck halfway between progressive and mainstream. The black/death juices of previous works have been squeezed dry; now EWIGKEIT is a colossal electronic layer propelled by rhythmic guitar riffing and clean vocals. "This time I did everything the way it should have been done long ago," says James himself, perhaps hinting at his musical preferences. Making everything "right" was aided by John Fryer, who had previously "straightened out" such acts as PARADISE LOST, NINE INCH NAILS, and HIM. From the very first notes, the album invites a critical test drive, since, as experience shows, straightforward records don't hold up for long. Nevertheless, one wants to believe that the abundance of strong melodies ("The Thought Police," "It's Not Reality") and successful atmospheric moments ("Far Away From Heaven," "Theoreality," "Transcend The Senses") in sum equals -- or at least comes close to -- an exception to that rule.