The Brotherhood of Pagans – ‘Only Once’ review.
How could I choose a face
When they are both the same?
‘I’ll dig your grave’
14 years after their latest release, The Brotherhood of Pagans is back with the new album, called ‘Only Once’. It should be said for a start that this album should be considered as the beginning of a new way rather than keeping up the previous band’s direction. ‘Only Once’ shows the band’s individual side much more than their ‘gothic rock’ one. The energy of the music became more tempered, physical and mature though it keeps quite unexpected ‘angry’ reflection, while the lyrics combine irony, black humor, obscurity and poetical images. However, there’re some relations with The Brotherhood of Pagans’95, but later about this.
The start track ‘Am I a Blow Fly’ probably is the most decadent song of the release and exactly one of its best ones. String tempered start with ‘whispering’ vocal line and tense cello additions fluidly grows into the powerful song with majestic and impassive vocals, suddenly dropping and growing up back again. The following track is the headline song ‘Only Once’. This song with synthy and guitar basis can be considered as the most ‘weightless’ song of the album, which refers us to the original BOP stuff. Then there’s the song ‘The Garden of Alkinoos’, which begins with slow obscure background melody and so much accented and moved forward vocal line that it makes the impression that Sailor sings a capella and all the music is nothing but decorations, when appearing of the shamanic drum rhythm turns this song to a kind of invocation of sincerity and passion. ‘As The Serpents Do’ is the band’s step back to its gothic rock origins, which is done very confidently and professional with great atmosphere and melody. Regarding to the next track, it is very correctly said in the band’s bio that it is “very personal cover version of the mythical track “Resurrection””. If compare this track with its original, many aspects of the band’s development will go closer to the surface. A listener will hear tempered track with noisy guitar and keyboard basis and strict a bit ‘steelish’ vocals, with the tense depressing atmosphere instead of light lyrical one as it was in the 95 version. ‘I’ll dig your grave’ is another hit song of the album. Probably, it contains the answer about that angry tension of the album in the words ‘We’re the evil simply ‘cause we are’. However, the track itself has a bit meditative atmosphere with ‘crawling’ sound, greatly added with melancholic keyboards, which make possible changes of the song’s atmosphere. ‘I am his voice’ corresponds the hard a bit schizoid track with post-industrial backgrounds as well as its follower, called ‘Get Off’ which moves the sound to more oppressive with hard guitar chords additions. The following ‘The Fate’ moderates that post-industrial frenzy with more rocky sound. This song shows in the best way the band’s ‘brand’ thing of this album – to make the sound more moderate from the main line and then suddenly stretch it to its maximum. “Death Row” is one more step to post-industrial direction, but more tempered for this time, though it can be used for dance as well. ‘Jack’, which finishes the ‘official’ part of the album is the mix of the album’s swelling obscurity, tempered sound and dynamism in one “Jack’s” face. It is exactly one of the best album’s songs and the catchiest one. The untitled bonus can be considered as the album’s epilogue and as the cheer to The Brotherhood of Pagans ’95 with its epic medieval ‘battle’ thematic of the sound canvas.
So the album is out, and it’s hard to say what place it will take in the world of music. It can be hardly considered as the representative of any particular style with its experiments and musical maturity. Probably, the only work I can call quite related to ‘Only Once’ is the ‘Gotterdammerung’ last album ‘Of Whores and Culture’.
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