LIES US レコード& CD

Review: Cardinal & Nun has reaped some great material on LIES before now but here makes a big return with a debut album. The eight tunes are all super raw and stripped back, with fuzzed out textures, punked out attitudes and fucked up energy. Despite all that angst there is lots to love here from the thrashing riffs to the absorbing basslines. The always shadowy tunes are packed with details be that an obscured vocal or punchy drum fill, and there is even time for some more sombre cuts like the still heavy but more heady 'What's Going On Tonight?'

Review: Last year Cardinal & Nun successfully set their stall out via a decidedly lo-fi cassette of wayward techno, EBM, industrial and new wave fusions. Here the Marseilles-based outfit steps it up a notch via a debut 12" for Ron Morelli's L.I.E.S. label. The four tracks are suitably loose, dark and otherworldly, with title track "I Met The Devil" - a pitch-black fusion of early Joy Division, throbbing new wave and late '70s Cabaret Voltaire - leading the way. "Go Away" sees them apply the same DIY fuzziness to EBM, while "Empoisonne" wraps discordant guitar solos and gravelly vocal snippets around another arpeggio-driven groove. They round things off via "Disintegration", a slower and druggier trip into thrusting, arpeggio-driven territory.