4 out of 5

Label: Thirsty Ear

Producer: J.G. Thirwell

The amount of output that Thirwell has managed during his career that is instantly identifiable as being of his brain and yet album to album, song to song, remains unique is jaw-dropping.  Not to mention the various names he’s worked under and how it’s always fit.  Some artists who use different pseudonyms eventually experience crossover in their style, where tracks could’ve appeared on any given set, regardless of nom de plume, but J.G.’s Foetus stuff sounds like Foetus, Steroid Maximus is a separate thing, under his own name it’s a separate thing…

So Flow – which in 2001 was the first Foetus album for a few years, and the first one to follow the major label ‘Gash’ – still sounds 100% like Thirwell, and all of the intense industrial awesomeness that comes with that.  That being said, some of this work was apparently incorporated into the Venture Bros. scoring Thirwell would do, and that sense of… re-use… or molding… sort of permeates through the album.  J.G. is always flipping through influences, incorporating a lot of film styles into the work, but there are a couple of tracks that sound like they’re trying for something – going for an aggressive NIN sound on track 1, or setting out to make a track that sounds like it’s from a horror movie…  These aren’t unusual starting points for J.G., not at all, it’s just that the line between inspiration and shaping seems blurrier on this album.  I dunno.  ‘Cause I talk outta’ my ass a lot, which seems painful, but you get used to it.

As I started, it doesn’t at all impact that these are wholly Foetus jams, nor does it distill the power and incomparable evil J.G. brings to things – for some reason, moreso than anyone from the industrial scene, his shtick of poppy / cheerful randomness and the gloomy vocals never feels forced to me.  That the album isn’t 100% grounded in the muck and mire of insanity, and might be a little pre-planned, is more than acceptable, given the sick song structures, wicked lyrics that dig deep but never obnoxiously so, and the always reliable slappy J.G. production sound.  And goddamn tracks like ‘Someone Who Cares,’ that easily wander through industrial, pop, and easy listening elements…