Alarm Agents [Explicit Lyrics, Import]

Death In June/Boyd Rice (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 1, 2005)
• Original Release Date: January 1, 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics, Import
• Label: NER/TESCO
• ASIN: B0009YVBMS
• In-Print Editions: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #342,963 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

“Alarm Agents,” the new album from Death in June and Boyd Rice, was released as two different versions on LP and CD. The songs “You Love The Sun, Don't You?” and “An Ancient Tale Is Told” are used in a cut-up form to segue tracks together on the CD. The CD version contains the exclusive track “The Man Who Laughs.” It comes in a deluxe, foil-blocked, debossed digipak. A “must-have” album for fans and collectors alike.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting lyrics and guitar work of exceeding beauty, November 27, 2005

By 

J.S.M. "socializer" (Seattle USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alarm Agents (Audio CD)

This is a mystical oriented series of folk soundscapes and, later, experimental arrangements of sound. Douglas P. has an exceedingly rich talent to create original and innovative music, and it's in full swing here, full power. The album is a combination of Douglas P. of Death in June doing the guitar work with Boyd Rice reading P.'s lyrics over the music. Rice's readings are straight within the mystic feel, not oriented towards shocking people, as other Death in June/Boyd Rice collaborations have been. A very gentle a beautiful album, evoking haunted sea scapes and winter days with the snow slowly falling outside the window. Also, whatever Douglas P.'s political beliefs might be they aren't on showcase here in this album, except in the general sense that basically everything an artist does is inter-related in some way. While people might want to portray D-I-J as a particular way for their own purposes, this album shows the truth about the talent behind the controversy, which has been exploited by people on both sides of the aisle.

Highly recommended.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Golden & Mystical, October 18, 2007

By 

Philippe Landry (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alarm Agents (Audio CD)

All the past worship of a certain sun-related symbol is here, it's just subtly conveyed. By now Douglas and Boyd's personalities completely overshadow their work allowing them to pursue less obvious pathways, i.e. simply strumming a guitar and reciting a few lines and still carrying an aura of misanthropy and might. There is a very hypnotic and mystical quality to the repetition of chords and other noises.

It's like Pet Sounds, really.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Death in June and the dead weight, August 14, 2011

By 

A Dinosaur-Shaped Car "Homosexual Porn" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alarm Agents (Audio CD)

Do lyrics matter? It's a common debate, and the answer is entirely dependent on the individual impetus of the music. In death/black metal, where they're often incomprehensible and the "point" of the music is the relation between riffs, they don't. In more cookie cutter rock music and punk, it depends on how the vocal melodies are written into the music, and which elements are meant to serve which.

In hip-hop, where the tunes err to the compositionally static side and vocal spontaneity is the focal point, they do. And here, where the music merely serves as "nice" wallpaper for spoken word, they do.

And that is my justification for judging this based on Boyd Rice's hilariously, eye-falling-out-rollingly horrible contributions. Douglas P. has put out his share of poetic dreck, but he has never literally written about "sipping a martini and reading Schopenhauer" (I am serious, this is a real lyric) like the former. The problem with Boyd Rice as an artist is that he is so enamored with the aura of idealized Romantic power, he often forgets to bring any shade of personality to the table--and when he actually does, it's rare that it's not juvenile or surface-oriented. He is essentially to neofolk/martial industrial what Manowar is to heavy metal, except it's not yet clear whether he's in on the joke or not.

An Amazon review is no place to talk about Boyd's personal failings or history, but anyone with half a brain can see his entire schtick is a high school phase that he's never grown out of. Sadly, this album ended up laughably dire for allowing him so much thematic control.