This ain't a TV show, this is for real
Just to make it clear that, even in this round, the revolution will not pierce the screen – except with a bullet. The hand on the trigger belongs to someone who knows a lot about atrocities. He probed the most bestial recesses of the unconscious (his, above all), he flushed out the scum from the dirtiest metropolises, he gave voice to the unspeakable and unacceptable. Present calls, James George Thirlwell answers. And don't expect acquittals.
First work in twelve years (eight of which, he informs us, spent refining this album), he continues the monosyllabic tradition of titles undaunted: after “deaf”, “pain”, “hole”, “nail” and so on and so forth, this time a dry “Halt” arrives to make us sit up straight. Written, produced and largely performed by Melbourne's Wagner, it is an anti-musical in which the author's well-known ferocity sifts through the contemporary world, with frightening results.
Wicked update of that one grandeur symphonic-industrial that is his trademark, “Succulence” begins with a slur crooning Waits-iano, opens up in a declamation of Little Simz without Little Simz, spanks the disciple Trent and dies in an agony of strings in the smell of Bernard Herrmann, spitting verses that leave no escape (“Because when war's declared/There may be no taboos/You are found guilty if you have already been accused”). To be included immediately among the top of his career, no more, no less.
As usual, there are no preclusions in the choice of paraphernalia: in order to annihilate and annihilate himself, JG charges headlong with the Ministry-style cyber-thrash of “Die Alone” or the Touch And Go brand noise of “Rabbit Hole”, but this doesn't stop him from becoming thoughtful in the Celtic ballad of “Scurvy” and in the medievalish march of “Warships”. An excellent sound designer for films that no one would have the courage to shoot, on “The World Is Broken” he bites into a sulphurous gospel of John Williams' dogfish, while “Dead To Me” sounds like a Hans Zimmer soundtrack rejected by the production before even listening to it.
To consolidate his caliber as a cultured composer, masterful weaver of synthetic melodramas, three unrivaled piece otherworldly: Coil in the noir sauce of “Harpoon”, the Celtic Frost bedlam of “Crater”, the ethereal levitation dungeon of “Polar Vortex”, one step away from Carpenter.
A virtuoso of versaccio elevated to bel canto, Thirlwell confirms himself as one of the most Luciferian interpreters as he engages in existential assessments worthy of a Michael Gira (“Let me die alone/And just put on my tombstone 'He tried and failed and here he lays'”) or slaps down with full hand the most imbecile conspiracy theories (“Our plans are in demand and Q just said so/The deep state is coming and they're making all our children gay”), up to one sneering self-quotation (that “throne of agony” evoked on “Many Versions Of Me”). And to deny the prophecy of death of the last track, our hero already has a sequel ready, scheduled for 2027: reassuring, at least, that he too still foresees a tomorrow.
When you need me, I am not for sale
02/03/2026
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
