Album & EP Reviews

John 3:16 – The Pact

John 3:16 – The Pact
Alrealon Musique
Release Date: 04/04/24
Running Time: 37:09
Review by Dark Juan
Several hundred million/10

It is well known that Dark Juan is a grumpy old bastard. Just today I have been annoyed by the bastard in the Land Rover tootling along at a steady 28mph in a 40 zone because he was fucking texting someone, my own inability to spell when I am typing fast because my brain moves so much faster than my fingers do, which incidentally, is why I retired from playing the guitar because I am so unutterably SHIT at it. Also, the fact that I have only had two days off from work and I am supposed to have four, and Mrs Dark Juan is ill again and there’s absolutely fuck all I can do about it because I have no medical training beyond being able to beat House at his own game on TV and finally that I have committed to a new degree- level course at work and have airily assured the examiner at Calderdale College that I will complete the 18-month-long course in six months.

I am an idiot. Now I have to do it.

So, in the interests of wildly procrastinating, I am studiously ignoring the email from the College and have instead elected to once more fire up the estimable Platter of Splatter ™, and place upon it an offering I have been sitting on for a good month – this being the latest album from Industrial godhead Phillipe Gerber, recording as John 3:16. Phillipe very kindly sent me a copy of this record for review personally, so thanks must be given unto him.

If you are not a scholar of the Bible, this is the verse that the name of the project references,

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Now, Dark Juan has questions… how does bestowing yet another human upon the planet grant anyone who believes in God eternal life? Why does that eternal life not happen while we are actually physically alive and has to be carried out in some other mental realm of existence? 

Anyway, the music of John 3:16 – If you are thinking that you are going to be listening to music that sounds like it has been created by chucking scrap iron down concrete stairs and the sound of automated welders and production lines being bastardised beyond all recognition by electronics, you are going to be sorely disappointed. John 3:16’s music is entirely different and is almost tidal in its inexorable power. 

I’m not writing the titles of the songs because they are too long and Phillipe Gerber clearly loves torturing people who write about his music, although they would be a rather splendid way of padding the word count, so I will refer to them by their order on the album. The first track opens things reasonably gently with swirling, echoing synth lines and an almost Shoegaze- like feel and what sounds like a Russian language repeating vocal line with an extraordinarily powerful single guitar chord also repeating beneath increasingly painful volume increase throughout the piece. 

The second track on the album owes as much to the likes of Chapterhouse and The Mobile Homes as much as it does to Godflesh and Throbbing Gristle as it starts at an already unpleasant volume with a harsh and disturbing wall of Metallic sound. This is before returning to a very cinematic midsection, all powerful string instruments overlaid with Black Metal guitar and vocals that have been twisted out of any form of sounding human. Distorted roaring, static-buzzing spoken word are the order of the day here and these combining into an almost conversation between both voices make this track (nah, still not writing the title out again) more than usually fascinating as Phillipe Gerber combines ideas and sonic violence into a new and unique confluence of aggression washing over the poor writer having to make some sense out of the indescribable menace that he has committed to record. All Dark Juan knows is that he is very, VERY afraid of Phillipe Gerber as he clearly has lots of unresolved issues that sound like they are going to explode in a welter of orgiastic, unstoppable violence if he is pushed even a millimeter further with his emotions…

The third tune on the record takes the boundaries that have been established with the first two songs and then chucks them straight out of the nearest window, being almost Trance-like and sensual, before tribal sounding drums, fucked-about with strings and a deeply unsettling dissonant piano line screw that up for the reviewer as well, and the song takes the left-hand path and gives us an example of what Nine Inch Nails would sound like if they were rather more Gothic and less Trent Reznory. Mrs Dark Juan likes the video for ‘The Hand That Feeds’ because Reznor apparently has nice arms. Maybe I should make a music video, but that would require talent and that is something that Dark Juan is in short supply of.

The very last song is a particular favourite of Dark Juan, as it’s serrated string section and painfully slowly building menace and ever building layers of sound crush the poor, unsuspecting listener into a sodden mass of chunky salsa and viscera dripping from the smashed skeleton that remains after listening to “The Pact”.

I need to summarise this motherfucker, then. Dark Juan has just noticed that his self-imposed word-count is far beyond where it should be, but the John 3:16 experience is COMPELLING ME TO WRITE MORE ABOUT IT! If you want to hear Industrial based on Metal, forget it. There are few riffs on this album. If you want to hear music that is truly Extreme and unique, then Dark Juan humbly suggests you give Phillipe Gerber and Alrealon Musique your money, because “The Pact” is powerful, dark, dangerous, predatory, heavy beyond compare and utterly irreplaceable. It is neutronium dense, incredibly complex and rich and diverse as fuck. Drone and Darkwave and Industrial combined into a chimeric occult nightmare that creeps through the shadows. That’s what John 3:16 is.

“I walk away from you without remorse, many more like you await me.”

You scary fucker, Gerber. Get out of my head.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System is dishing out top marks like there’s no tomorrow at the moment and awards John 3:16 several hundred million/10 for an Industrial/ Drone album that knows no boundaries or restraint.

TRACKLISTING:
01. I Am Part of That Power Which Eternally Wills Evil and Eternally Works Good (featuring Misha Paramonoff)
02. Once I Blazed Across The Sky, Leaving Trails Of Flame, I Fell To Earth and Here I Lie
03. I am Part Of The Part That Was Everything
04. una[VOID]able (featuring Be The Hammer)
05. Prince Of Lies/ King Of The Night
06. The Beast/ Kill Me, Heal Me
07. Dunkel Seelenfresser (featuring Rob Onion of Sobaki Tabaka)
08. E’en Hell Hath It’s Peculiar Laws
09. Who Holds The Devil, Let Him Hold Him Well, He Hardly Will Be Caught a Second Time

LINE-UP:
Phillipe Gerber –  everything

LINKS:

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