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REVIEW:
Overall Rating:
  
Lyrics:
Beats:
Written By:
The Reccollectah
“Nightmares
that surface from shallow sleep” was the first of the two
legendary/notorious albums Holocaust decided to record under
his Warcloud alter ego, which gave fans all over the world
finally the chance to devour a full dish of Holomania, after
years of few but impressive features on ‘The Swarm’, the
first Bobby Digital album and Killarmy’s “Dirty Weaponry”.
Both got heralded as timeless underground Wu Fam classics by
some and regarded as incomprehensible, worthless mumblings
from “the biggest lunatic to ever come near a microphone “
by (lots of) others . In other words: business as usual…
This one is in my opinion the weaker one of the two Warcloud
albums due to the lack of musical cohesion on here as
Skarekow only has 6 tracks on this album . The production of
the other tracks mostly went to Item # but some other
producers as Uno, Tariq and 6 Mill (known from his
production for the Black Knights debut) also got to serve
one track each . So over half of the album’s music goes more
in the direction of the Black Knights / Northstar type of
beats … which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but doesn’t give
the album a unified sound. Only some of those tracks , for
instance “Old toy room ( a pie in the window)”, “Mad axes”
and “In the hall of the warrior king” , match well with the
characteristic atmosphere created by Warcloud’s brother in
arms on these albums: Skarekrow .
Skarekrow already catches the Warcloud madness far better
than the others but only on the second album would we fully
discover how well these two go together in the studio, but
more on that tomorrow … back to the program: the first
Warcloud album .
It takes off quite good with the first four tracks with the
Uno produced “Island of Dr. Warcloud” surprisingly fitting
between the other ( Skarekrow) tracks. Lyrically we’re
immediately in ‘asylum’- mode as we get bizarre choruses
such as
One candy
apple, two white chocolates, three blueberries
or
Island of Dr. Warcloud, journey, journey
Journey to spirit, Island, voyage, voyage
'In the Good Old Summer Time', looking swell
'In the Good Old Summer Time', looking swell
The latter also spiced up with some “Jiggy, jiggy, boom,
boom, magena, magena, la, la” chanting …
uhm, sounds logic, doesn’t it ? But never mind, don’t ask
yourself too many questions as you are on a special ride
here . Just roll with it and after a while it sounds funny
and good, even if it doesn’t make any sense at all. Doing
this you’ll discover intriguing verses like :
There was a young lady, my wife, who disrespect
And the first day I met her she had a ribbon around her neck
And she wore that ribbon for years and hear the flute
When I'd ask her to remove it, she'd always have excuse
One stormy night while we were in bed
I snatched the ribbon off and off rolled her head
I laughed myself to sleep, the room spun around like a
record.
“Strawberry crème (club song)” is just what it’s title
claims to be , not that you’ll find the peeps in the clubs
bouncing to this anywhere … maybe a crowd of skeletons in a
Tim Burton movie would ? Holocaust and his Black Knights
mates describe a night out in the town … a rather
exceptional topic for Warcloud with even more exceptional
“normal” verses.
Then the album
looses my interest a bit with the middle part: the Black
Knights song “Something is going to make me slap this bitch”
ft Kurupt is not bad but it just doesn’t fit in this album,
same can be said for the Northstar song “Vicious killer beez”
ft Suga Bang Bang. Putting the first one on the album just
because it featured Kurupt wasn’t really a sensible move
either as Young Gotti’s contributions can be described as a
traditional superficial Bitch tribute chorus , some annoying
squeeking here and there throughout the song plus an intro
and outro that are to be ignored as much as possible …thàt
interesting, yes. “The Beer song “ isn’t strong enough to
hold anyone’s attention for the almost 7 minutes it takes to
end, there are far better drinking songs to be found in
Music’s history archives than this attempt. Then “ Channel
Warcloud” , a promising title but an irritating song.
Luckily not all hope is lost as “Old toy room (pie in the
window)” gets a haunting soundtrack for Warcloud to drop his
ad random lyrics over, filled with just about anything.
Little gems are to be discovered here and there while
drowning yourself in his world , just one example :
Money comes from paper, smoke comes from burning it
Also notable is “In the hall off the warrior King” where the
chorus simply consists of Warcloud chanting his name :
simple but very effective. Also lyric wise Warcloud again
proves to have a enormous imagination going:
Aiyo, you get
strangled in burgundy velvet ropes
Stained wooden floorboards, sleeping on the ceiling I murder
warlords
'Fever Dream', sling fiend, gun, lead blow
The jury let me walk, I laughed and spat up a toe
And crushed your dirty smiles while I was eating tiles
And farted out twenty beach balls, bounced down the aisle.
So after a
rather disappointing middle part things turn for the better
again with “Mad axes”. The music fits Warcloud’s style like
a glove inspiring him to drop thunderous lyrics like:
Warcloud, you
punk crews, never started
It's like someone took human skins and filled them with
garbage
You'll find your ass back in the dumpster from heavy gats
Baptism of blood, I'll leave you with flies and gnats
I stalk wit a sawed-off shotgun and an axe
All wrapped in bandages, coat was long and black
Spark it in the darkness, we rich men and hunchback
Shovel through the portal with cyber gats for asking
School of Assassins, stashing your body fragments
Just behind eight big crates we drunk laughing
From then on
it’s straight uphill till the end of the album :
“Mics, Turntables, Spray Cans & Records” also appears on the
Professional’s “Plethora of lyrics “ album but here it has
different music, a different verse from Warcloud , other
features … so only the chorus and title are the same …
totally different versions but both worth exploring. Same
can be said for the remarkably short “Falling hammer” where
Warcloud is “laying on the roof with no skin from the top
down”. On the original release “Fever dream” was the final
song and a good choice as it is a great one to end things
with. On the Chambermusic rerelease ( the one you are far
more likely to get your hands on) we get a bonus track ft
Leviathan and Onslawt. Not bad at all but I would have
preferred “Fever dream” to end the album as originally
intended.
Final conclusion:
Some Warcloud fanatics might want to crucify me for saying
this but this is not his best work to date as the album
lacks cohesion musicwise and Skarekrow seemed to be just
getting warmed up on this one here, not yet fully daring to
translate Warcloud’s unique universe into likewise unique
music . A hesitation he very soon would prove to have
overcome with what was to follow shortly after this one …
Feel free to (dis)agree.
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