Wilmar: Hey, Treponem Pal, I heard about them on the Celtic Frost forum! You have to understand that I as a Celtic Frost devotee am prowling their forum regularly and that on the subforums the activities of ex-bandmembers are discussed. And there was a discussion whether or not Stephen Priestly (drummer on ‘Morbid Tales’, ‘Cold Lake’ and ‘Vanity/Nemesis’) played drums on Treponem Pal’s debut. Eventually we decided in favour of Priestly, but the Youtube link to one of their videoclips made it perfectly clear: Treponem Pal was no band for me.
And lo and behold: I get their seventh album to review. And to be quite honest: musically it sounds very good. The solid production makes songs like ‘Dirty Dance’, ‘Planet Crash’, ‘Hardcore Massive Soldier’ or ‘Freak Machine’ blast out of the speakers. Even the Motörhead meets industrial track ‘Evil Angel’ is very good to digest. But the thing that actually makes me laugh all the time are the vocals by Marco Neves. It’s like watching an episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo dammit, or that I hear Peter Sellers saying: Helleu, dees ees eenspecteur cleeseu speeking an da fun’. And then there is the pseudo-aggressive pinched down voice… Which makes it actually more sour when you hear the final two tracks ‘One More Time’ and ‘Never Give Up’ in which Marco shows us a very good clean voice. Why the funny growling? And about the accent: Richard Kruspe was criticized for his German accent on the latest Emigrate album… Well compared to the French accent of Marco Neves, Richard speaks excellent English. I should have made the decision to sing in French instead of English, because it doesn’t sound very good.
But ok: musically it is quite good, it has a very heavy sound, a very industrial character and the CD might have made it into my year list if it wasn’t for the vocals. Too bad they don’t have a female singer which could make me conclude with ‘You Stupid Woman’! I have to conclude my review in the hope that on the next album Treponem Pal leaves the pinched down vocals and continues in the direction of the last two songs.
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