Industrial jungles have a variety of animal and plant species. The rusty animals need no food or sleep and the astringent plants don't require any sunlight for their growth. Birds sing noises and fly at such a dangerous speed that they could pass through any wood remains.
What once was a step in the economical and social evolution of modern society, became a mere result of apathy and dysfunction.
In their pursuit of meaning in life, humans came to be characterized by a new type of despair; one built on the countless efforts of finding relieving illusions of normality. No matter how many warning signs were flickered on the inevitable result of their actions, they adopted a self destructive egotistic lifestyle.
Leichenschrei is the second album by the Australian industrial group SPK (Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv). Their debut album, Information Overload Unit, explores a brutal industrial noise sound and places Leichenschrei as the stepping stone towards the group's synth based and rhythmical material that was to come after it.
In 1987, The Legendary Pink Dots' frontman Edward Ka-Spel talked a little about industrial music for the Italian fanzine Snowdonia: ''I was always interested in that; Throbbing Gristle really affected me and "Second Annual Report" would send shivers down my spine, their lyrical content and overall philosophy. But there are so many sub-TG who just say 'let's get in a bedroom, let's make a noise and let's call it art' and it's garbage! I think industrial music should have stopped completely after SPK made "Leichenschrei" because that was the ultimate, it was a brilliant album that nobody could make a better, more definitive work in industrial music.''
Although Leichenschrei got appreciation from John Peel, who played it for months, group leader Graeme Revell tried for more than 11 months to get a review for the album, ringing up NME every week. After finally getting Chris Bohn to make a review, they'd had Neubauten and Test Dept on the front cover, 6 months after giving them the album. The band almost stopped out of sheer frustration at that time.
With Leichenschrei being one of the most outstanding industrial releases of all time, the albums put out by SPK afterwards came as a total surprise. Zamia Lehmanni: Songs of Byzantine Flowers and Digitalis Ambigua: Gold & Poison went on with the industrial sound wrapped into a rather experimental ambiental/darkwave/synth approach making the band noticeable for its precise determination to show all aspects of industrial music.
Tracklist:
A1. Genetic TransmissionA2. Post-Mortem
A3. Desolation
A4. Napalm (Terminal Patient)
A5. Cry from the Sanatorium
A6. Baby Blue Eyes
A7. Israel
A8. Internal Bleeding
A9. Chamber Music
B1. Despair
B2. The Agony of the Plasma
B3. Day of Pigs
B4. Wars of Islam
B5. Maladia Europa (The European Sickness)