Android Lust Devour, Rise, And Take Flight

Not only has Reznor of NIN lost his teeth, but it is Shikhee of Android Lust that has pulled them out of Reznor’s head with the release of her very potent, highly nihilistic Devour, Rise, and Take Flight.  With Reznor’s crown as the bloodied prince of angst in jeopardy, Android Lust is all too willing to invade and conquer.

Android Lust is Shikhee, a persona draped in anger and loathing, who, as NIN did in the distant past, uses the things that disrupt and confuse as a palette of musical exasperation.  On her new album, Shikhee goes right to the throat with a collection of 12 songs, each more harrowing, more broken than the previous.  With intense heat emanating from the first track, “Lover Thine,” it’s hard to believe that it can get any darker…but it does.

“Lover Thine” begins with an industrial barrage that mixes a hardcore element with murderous imagery segueing into a musically darker “Hole Solution,” a song that spews hatred like a fluid fouled, spilling from a spigot.  The softer but no less poisonous, “Wicked Days” is excellent, followed by the suicidal assault of “The Body,” a definite declaration of who owns whose flesh, building into a miasma of resolve.  Even the president cannot escape this heated anger with a directed furnace blast of sardonic barbs found in “Fell the Empty Mask.”

You owe it to yourself to bask in this bath of intoxicating rage.  Every song is a treatise of pain and anguish, a mixture of introspective disbelief and unanswered fury blended in a fabric of frightening electronic sounds with no borders, explorative textures, and dizzying rhythms.  Android Lust is the new voice of desperation.  Shikee, the voice and heart of Android Lust, is the new fear and loathing.

Move over, Reznor, your successor hath come.