Entertainment – “Gender” review
“Gender”, the first album of the US band Entertainment, which’s available in CD and vinyl formats, was chosen as “the best album of 2008” by Deathrock.com. Hard to say if it’s a really best album of the year, while there were releases by “Gods” such as “The Damned” as well as by some young but promising bands. But it is exactly clear that “Gender” is one of the most brilliant and remarkable works of the year, or even of the entire decade. The music of “Gender” if 100% Art music with obscure sound, decadent keyboard additions and “diseased” vocals. Regarding to some comparisons, the band was compared with plenty of their colleagues, balancing on the borders of post-punk, indie rock and deathrock, but Entertainment is very close to become one of few bands of the current century which can become a reference for other bands to be compared with. As for comparisons to describe to a reader the band’s music, “Gender” is as artistic as Bauhaus, as decadent as UK Decay, as obscure as The Cure at the peak of their obscurity and as sexual as Christian Death. There’s just one detail which damaged my impression about the band’s primacy. Take a song from “Gender” and put into The Cure’s “Pornography” (or on the contrary), and it will fit the album. It won’t sound as a copy, or some “followers’” stuff, neither better, nor worse, there’s even no much points of comparisons between these two bands, but common impression makes these works quite related. So, I hope that this aspect will be improved and the next album, which the band currently works on, won’t make this sense of relation. In conclusion, this album is highly recommended to those who haven’t forgotten that post-punk music is also about Art.
Grade: 9.5/10
Pall ‘Nattsol’ Zarutskiy
‘Grave Jibes Fanzine’
