Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Perhaps more than any other art form, the wheels that turn band memberships and the off shoots that see music evolve and prosper is a by-product of the artistic and perhaps more combustible association of having so many diverse personalities within a tight and fruitful combination. Fallings out, bust ups, natural progression or just the urge to do something new away from the people that you have fought alongside is enough to spark the motor of creativity and force a long dead sense of freedom from out of exile.

For Emigrate, there is no leaving the music alone, especially for Rammstein’s Richard Kruspe. The power over the beat is one all the four members of the group have mastered with much pride and it shows in its most complete form on the band’s second album, the hyper-ventilating, lung beating and tremendous Silent So Long. 

This though is no side project, no delving into the murky waters of an unknown and untamable beast, this is a collaboration worthy of standing alongside Rammstein at their very best. A collaboration that sees Olsen Involtini, Arnaud Giroux and Mikko Sirén blast the spots off a Dalmatian at 100 yards and also having the canine being as pleased as punch for the tireless endeavor but also sees such artists as Motörhead’s Lemmy, Peaches, Marilyn Manson and Korn’s Jonathan Davis involved in the action; action that is so packed it would make a Hollywood blockbuster blush with its inadequacies.

There has been a mass departure in recent years of bands within the genre being able to hold their own against the emerging powerhouse of music coming out of Scandinavia. The traditional homes have been ransacked and pillaged for all they were worth and the new owners have had very little to fear in terms of musical retribution. In Emigrate, the workers have returned from a sort of self-imposed exile and there lies a battle ahead, one that thankfully groups like Emigrate can lead; it can only spell hopefully an abundance of great music from either side as they jostle for supremacy; especially with great tracks such as Eat You Alive, Rock City, Hypothetical, Born On My Own and Faust rocking the joint.

As the writing under the Statue of Liberty should perhaps say, give me your poor, tired and music deprived, for from here there shall come a revolution. Silent So Long they may have been, but Emigrate have come roaring back with attitude.

Ian D. Hall