Perturbator
Age of Aquarius LP
Nuclear Blast Records
Bio by Max Freedman
On the sixth and latest Perturbator album, Age of Aquarius–James Kent’s first for the renowned metal label Nuclear Blast–he offers up a more propulsive spin on his moody early work, showcasing his most confident, plainly beautiful, and thematically refined music to date. Where his previous album, 2021’s Lustful Sacraments, was about bad habits and addiction, Age of Aquarius explores how individualism, conflict, and war are interrelated and dominant societal forces. Both brutal and sublime, the album feels like the musical equivalent of a scream into the existential void.
His ballistic, militaristic sound dovetails with his thematic focus on human aggression, which manifests itself throughout Age of Aquarius. “We have this climate nowadays of people getting divided over everything,” Kent says. “Every debate is two-sided, very extreme, very warlike, and people are very into group thinking: ‘There's this side of the conflict, and there's this side of the conflict, and if you're not on my side, you're wrong.’”
Bleak and blunt, yes, but expectedly so from an album that starts with a song called “Apocalypse Now.” Punitive kick drums and blasting synths live up to the title, as do guest vocals from Ulver’s Kristoffer Rygg (another metal giant, Alcest’s Stephane Paut, provides guest vocals on the album’s closer, the title track). Rygg’s chant of “Apocalypse now! / There is blood on the ground / We've got bullets for everyone” feels applicable to being alive at any given moment, introducing Age of Aquarius’ themes in just the right way: When have we, as a species, not been defined by conflict, violent and otherwise, arising from individualism?
Kent intentionally chooses very evocative song titles since most of his tracks lack lyrics and primarily convey mood through instrumentals. “I like to think of every album as a movie,” he says. “The tracks are all scenes from that one big movie.” The most brutal scene, then, is “The Art of War,” a dance-ready banger that ranks among Kent’s hardest-hitting songs; its vivid, forceful production attests to the two and a half years he spent tirelessly mastering and elevating his signature style (he wrote, recorded, performed, produced, and mixed the record himself, minus the guest vocals and lyrics). The track embodies the very sound of going into battle, and it could well be the album’s thesis. “It's more of war as an idea than a concrete event,” Kent says about the LP’s subject matter. It’s no surprise his distinct style of electronic body music (EBM)–built on a DNA of post-punk, goth, and techno influences–has widely appealed to fans of new wave, industrial, and metal alike (his recent collaborators and tourmates HEALTH are an apt comparison).
Yet there are moments of beauty, too: "The Swimming Pool” is a serene instrumental piano ballad that evokes video game music, fittingly as Perturbator first broke through via the soundtracks to the beloved Miami Hotline shooter games in 2012 and 2015. The track’s gorgeous, moonlit ambiance is vaguely surreal, hinting at a dream that inspired the composition. The cinematic “Lady Moon” ebbs and flows in intensity over seven crushing, breathtaking minutes; here, his collaborator Greta Link sings, in Kent’s words, “In the place of someone who was wanted and needed by everybody, but who wants to be on their own,” illustrating an innate desire to be a free individual (“And you're suffering, all deep inside / Yes, you're suffering inside your mind / You always want to be alright.”)
“Mors Ultima Ratio,” the title of which translates roughly to “death is the ultimate option,” is a sprinting track that presents an even darker outlook. We might always be in conflict as a species–with others and ourselves–but with Age of Aquarius, Kent provides its fantastic score.
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