Militia "face of god" CD reissue just received and listened.
This 2015 album was odd release. Was available from band, but pretty much never seen anywhere. Even discogs prices were high, despite supposedly 666 copies made. I suspected that there was not 666 made. Now, getting the Old Europe Cafe repress, I make assumption that this is actually factory made digipak covers for bunch of the original discs? At least disc has subterra label matrix prints. Original CD edition in handmade packaging would have been probably big task to get done.
So never got this before. Only missing link in Militia discography. To get it now, is at the same time great, and not so great. What is great about it, is obviously: It is Militia. Nobody does the percussive industrial like this anymore. Not many did it this well in first place. Themed around religion, mostly critical & atheistic take on it. There are couple of classic tracks already heard in earliest output. New versions of Face of God and Necromancer. They are not as good as the originals, though. Opening of the CD seems to sample from Kingdom of God mCD and there are few sound clips here and there that to my ears appear clearly the same or taken from same source as early samples were.
This is the first negative aspect. While re-doing Face Of God with that iconic metal beat certainly still sounds inspiring, was it necessary? Basically indicating that best tracks are still the early works. Best ideas are recycling the old sound sources. Finally the new tracks are not bad, but they suffer from the usual tinny, thin and digital recording methods. Colossal soundscape of early works is so much greater compared to digital era, where many metal objects what I can only assume to be huge sized, sound as if playing with tin cans. Fact is that you can not make something sound big merely by adding reverb. Recording loud beating of metal objects is one of the most difficult tasks there is, to be able to make it also sound loud and big.
If this was done by anyone else, I'd probably be concluding that finally there is some good new percussive industrial. With Militia I need to say that they could do better. Despite all criticism, I do strongly recommend this. Despite all I said, it is probably best of the CD albums since original Black Flag hoisted double CD.
