Signs Ov Chaos

Frankenscience (Earache)
by Angela Dauthi

Dark Ambient sometimes goes beyond the emotionally disturbing to the merely absurd. And that’s the mood I’ve been getting from a lot of the ambient/depressing discs my bosses keep giving me. But Signs Ov Chaos expands beyond the normal Industrial/Gothic/Dark/Ambient framework, and fascinates me. They use modern beats (read: Doesn’t settle for the boom, boom, boom of techno), and shift between all of them, and more, some parts Einstürzende Neubauten, some parts mild Lords Of Acid, and some parts Spirit Feel. The music alternately gets me moving and depresses me into Morrissey fields and beyond. They don’t try the assault method of distorted vocals and obscene lyrics, but go for subtler means of auditory disturbance and lulling atonal melodies. At times I wouldn’t even put them into a “dark” or ”gothic” category. They’re experimental ambient all the way, with a melancholy tinge to the music. Their Psychic TV-esque lyric sheet (and album title) suggests a bit more superfluous intellectual pretext than the music actually brings forth, but they seem to be on the right track. All in all, they induce subtle thought processes that coax a slightly new perspective into the judgment of music.