So after waiting around for 3 years threatening all of us with 'Supergangbang' (which I suppose has become the Chinese Democracy of Chicago Industrial Rock), Die Warzau has dropped Vinyl 88. It's more or less a greatest hits album with a twist: everything is remixed and there are six new tracks (2 of which everyone who would give a shit has heard at this point).
I've given the album a few runs through, and like all DW albums (except for MAYBE Convenience), I'll probably have a much better respect for this album after hearing it a ton of times on different stereos and different settings. So that said, take these as my initial thoughts. Your results may vary.
Some of the older songs that had that signature Jim Marcus 'noise over the sake of taste'thing he ruined Sister Machine Gun's Torture Technique with have been fixed (for the most part). Particularly, the cuts from Engine sound really good here. All Good Girls has a much more palpable mix, with the vocals really far in the front and rely much more on the merits of Marcus's more-than-able vocal chords than a bunch of fake sounding verbs 'n choruses. That happens in a lot of places on the older cuts (the Land of the Free mix is awesome for example). Coming Down and Funkapolis sound much more, I dunno, modern? It's a good thing for sure.
All of the songs have these musical interludes between them so if you listen straight through, the album sounds like one cohesive work. In some parts that is really cool, like the transition from Born Again to All Good Girls with its Bowie-Berlin-Trilogy-Esque synths. Other times it's pure shit like the Coming Down to Kleen one (which btw, on itunes, these songs are swapped...typical Die Warzau scatter-brainness).
All in all, despite the eclectic reputation Die Warzau has, this is about as straight ahead of a dance record as anything I've heard from them. A lot of the weird new directions explored on Engine and Convenience are in tact, but with a much more dancy filter.
As for the new cuts (not including Insect or Born Again, both of those are killer). They sound like filler except for Hitler's Brain. It has George Clinton (yes that George Clinton) doing this spoken word shit with a huge chorus from Jim Marcus. All in all that's a track that will be a staple at Neo I'm quite certain.
I wanted to write this review talking about how this is a great launching point for people who aren't really into Die Warzau yet. Unfortunately, that's not really what you get here. It's basically six new tracks with old ones thrown in and remixed to sound like new tracks. It'd be like if Trent Reznor took songs from Pretty Hate Machine and remixed them with the tools he had to make Year Zero with. In 2007.
My gut feeling here is that Die Warzau bit off more than they could chew with the Supergangbang project. Like maybe they weren't REALLY all that into making new music. Or maybe their day jobs got in the way (Jim is a typographer by day now and I think Van is an engineer at CRC or something). So rather than just quit altogether, they rushed this out the door in order to get the songs they wrote committed to record. It's not a bad record persay, but a 'greatest hits' package from a band that seems to hate everything that is capitalism screams "we're out of money and ideas".
Honestly, this one doesn't have me flipping out as much as I hoped it would. Maybe a few more spins will change my opinion. It's here and on itunes if you're so inclined.