Fall of Because - Life Is Easy (1999)^{Release ID: 29336}

If you wanna be technical, this is truly the first ever industrial metal album, to be recorded anyway. And already it sets the genre's aggressive synthetic tone. From the heart and mind of innovative inventors, listeners who had the chance to hear the sound when it was performed could hear a new modern future. One of humanity's complicated life of what's more moral and what's not. All told within compositions of sonic noise, industrial synths, and metal guitars. The damage done in society is impossible to fix, and this is the kind of music made by people who want to let out their thoughts of desperation in an instant, for people who have those same thoughts. The 80s was a decade when the noise-fueled genre of industrial was spreading over to rock, and later, metal, ready for our minds to be warned of mankind's peril...

1982 was when two Birmingham musicians B. C. Green and Paul Neville first started the band O.P.D. (Officially Pronounced Dead). Then a year later, they changed their band name to Fall of Because, taken from a song by industrial rock developers Killing Joke. Then another year later, Justin Broadrick entered the band as their drummer. The trio recorded a demo in 1986 titled Extirpate. Most of those songs, along with a few live tracks, make up the album Life is Easy, which was not released until 1999. Note that this band was an earlier incarnation of Godflesh, with a few Fall of Because songs later being-re-recorded for Godflesh's debut Streetcleaner and EP Merciless. What makes Fall of Because different from Godflesh is the primal production, Justin Broadrick using live drums instead of a drum machine, and the instrumentation sounding more punky while still having industrial noise. Though the vocals by Broadrick and Neville foreshadow that of Godflesh with their bleak cold shouts and melodies.

Beginning this cold isolated album is the devastating intro "Devastator", showing the best of Neville's guitar nose. That song was re-recorded for Godflesh's Streetcleaner along with the title track, with an approach easily compared to Swans before they moved out of their original industrial-noise sound at that time. Thanks to the dual guitar attack, bands like Pitchshifter would be able to emphasize their discordant lead work and help develop industrial metal. The dirtier side of the album that deviates from Godflesh's later glory is exhibited in the punky "Middle Amerika". Seems like they were more interested in punk than metal back in those days. The industrial rock of early Killing Joke and Swans is combined with a bit of the pre-grind punk of Napalm's Death Scum side A. Ironically, the monstrous "Grind" is a slow crawler.

"Ecstasy of Hate" shows that there's a noise-ridden side of industrial metal that is a polar opposite to the catchy melody of later bands like PAIN. "Malew***eslag" has more mellow yet noisy sludge. "Lifef***er-Sh*tsucker" has too much of the punky grind of early Napalm Death. "Merciless" is so slow and doomy, with powerful riffs crushing your spine and ripping it out from your neck. That's the kind of feeling induced from the sludgy bass and the heaviness brought forward from the 45-second mark onwards. The crushing riff may sound redundant, but the repetition is worth it. Justin's smashing vocals come close to growling. This could be used in a dramatic slow-motion movie fight scene. Midway through is a clean bridge that's also repeated. Everything is memorable here, though still behind the title track as the ultimate highlight. "Survive" is the first of the 3 live tracks, though this one is just a singular song, unlike the next two...

And now for the live shows, the first of which, "Fight Show" is worth a small journey. Although consisting of a few songs ("Empire of Lies", "Whiterock-Blackdeath", "Christian Motherf***er", and "Ecstasy of Hate"), when performed back to back, they actually form a top-notch multi-part 15-minute suite. The concert is infamous for a crowd fight in the middle of the setlist, with one of the members telling someone to go back to their "gothic s***hole in town". For the actual performance, it is one of the most intense live shows I've heard! Ex-Napalm Death members Mick Harris and Nik Napalm appear as guests, thus furthering the hardcore-industrial crossover. Sadly, the "Xmas Special" live recording doesn't sound as nice in quality, only there for the sake of history. The "Life is Easy" segment there is still good, but not "Calling" or "Submit-Suppress".

It's amazing how even when you think Godflesh started off big in their young years, an earlier developing demo from their earlier incarnation was hidden under Godflesh fans' noses for some time. Life is Easy would've made history as the first official industrial metal if it was released in 1987 as initially planned. I guess more extreme metalheads back then weren't too disappointed since Bathory's 3rd album and Mayhem's EP from that year turned out to be black metal's developing miracles. Anyway, while I don't favor this Fall of Because album as much as Godflesh's classics, it's still essential for those who want to hear the earliest industrial metal to ever exist....

Favorites: "Life is Easy", "Middle Amerika", "Ecstasy of Hate", "Merciless", "Fight Show", "Xmas Special" ("Life is Easy" segment only)