After listening to some quite average albums I can finally calm down, say that everything is not that bad yet, and put my arsenal of acrid notes and irony back to the drawer. There is no need to introduce Sutcliffe Jugend. It is one of the main bands in UK that stood at the origins of power electronics in early eighties together with Whitehouse, Ramleh and so on. After thirty years they are still alive and Cold Spring has released their album that took three years to make and remake and has playing time of more than an hour. The material in it is rather varied. From relatively calm and sickly lustful to schizophrenic and hysteric tracks. But all in all that's good quality industrial that does not try to tear your eardrums with unsuspected sound contrasts or worship of absolute distortion. After spinning the disc for several times, it was quite weird to hear such clear, precise and quality sound, but such proper experiments and decisions of musicians gladdens since big part of the scene blindly follows the raw and filthy path of sound making and another big part limits themselves to experiments behind the laptop. From time to time I was thinking to myself whether or not there are not too many glitchy elements and broken melodies, and rhythms, but when schizophrenic Tomkins vocal with himself joins in, the totality gets truly fucked up where every part of it suits perfectly to the overall picture. Songs in the album varies in such a way that you don't get bored soon and you can repeat the disc over and over. The very beginning and the track "With Extreme Prejudice" gives a very high start and after listening to the part of this title song, you can see whether you are going to like this whole album or not. Similar variety is found in other tracks too. The song "Lucky" is the exceptional one, with the calm voice in the foreground, talking about violence, beatings with baseball bats, drugs, women and so on. And the following "I have kissed the sick" draws you into machine of chaotic broken sounds. It does not grow up to breakcore, but keeps your attention well. The madness grows when the disc goes towards the end. I start to think that it's a real avantgarde of power electronics while listening to "Oblivion". Flowing background with surprising chords, moans and vocal insanity simply destroys the remainders of sanity and deludes in the distorted world of Sutcliffe Jugend. I'd say the album is intellectually aggressive and this duo still has to try and disappoint me. If Ramleh and Whitehouse easily accomplished this task, with all my respect to Sutcliffe Jugend, I can say that I haven't yet heard the work that would highly disappoint me. "With Extreme Prejudice" overall is one of the original and better albums that I've had a chance to listen to lately. Of course it's subjective, but I am convinced by this real feeling of schizophrenia, that is transmitted via my speakers. It's a pity that texts are not made public, but you can more or less hear them if you listen to this album carefully enough. The digipack looks very nice and design is pretty neat. It is a strong and recommended album.

Format: CD
Released: 2011
Label: Cold Spring Records