Monolith Cocktail Blog

Review: Dominic Valvona

Vukovar ‘Cremator’
(Other Voices Records) 25^th May 2019

In a constant state of erratic flux, you never know which particular inception of Vukovar will show up when the time comes to laying down their brand of hermetic imbued visions for posterity, the only constant being de facto avatar, whether anyone agreed or not to this appointment, Rick Antonsson.

Yet in only four years since laying down the foundations of their stark morbid curiosity and industrial Gothic pop debut Emperor, Vukovar have managed to record seven albums via umpteen labels and always via a series of travails and fall-outs. Flanked at the time of recording by Dan Shea and Buddy Preston, and with the dutiful Phil Reynolds of Small Bear Records fame sticking it all together once more as producer, the seventh three-syllable signature grand theatre of despondent romanticism is a collaborative affairs of a kind, featuring as it does both the vaporous linger and narration of Holly Hero (Smell & Quim) and omnipresence of Simon Morris (The Ceramic Hobs).

Cremator arrives just as the Vukovar look certain to split: Buddy and Dan breaking away recently to form the Beauty Stab duo, their debut single already released on Metal Postcard Records. Carrying the torch for now, going forward, Rick will continue with the Vukovar mantle. Far from orchestrated, Cremator is nonetheless a swansong, a curtain call at least for the original lineup. It just happens to also be one of the band’s best and most accomplished works.

Suffused with disillusion, as they row across a veiled River Styx (or in this case, as alluded to in the yearning slow junk ride over the lapping black waves of tortured cries of ‘The River Of Three Crossings’, the Japanese Buddhist version of that mythological destination), Vukovar and converts add more fuel to a bonfire of vanities to an overall sound that reimagines Bernard Summer as the frontman of a Arthur Baker produced Jesus And Mary Chain.

Though always wearing their influences on their sleeves, there’s also this time around a trio of cover versions, both obvious and more obscure. These include a despondent if scuzzed growling bass with radiant synth live version of the Go-Betweens ‘Dive For Your Memory’, a cooed ethereal voiced dreamy, with phaser-effects set to stun, diaphanous vision of Psychic TV’s ‘The Orchids’, and, most poignant, a gauze-y heaven-bound ghostly homage (complete with Hebrew vocals) to the late Tel Aviv cowboy Charlie Megira, on the hymnal ‘Tomorrow’s Gone’.

Elsewhere a Gothic esoteric atmosphere of post-punk and apparition crooned rock’n’roll invokes a communion between Alan Vega and the Silver Apples on the magisterial downer ‘Internment By Mirrors’, Coil and Joy Division on the album’s imperial vortex of sorrow, half-narrated, opener ‘Roma Invicta’, and Blixa Bargeld era Bad Seeds leap into the augur’s furnace with The Sisters Of Mercy, on the heavy toiled ‘Voices/Seers/Voices’.

It sounds darkly glorious in all its melodrama and pomposity, with as cerebral high artistic references as the infamous Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s feature length documentary ‘Love Meetings’, and the ‘Decameron’ 100-story spanning novellas of the 14^th century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio: In fact, what with the album’s opening use of the triumphal Latin mantra of an all-conquering Roman Empire (before it’s famous fall), there’s a lot of Italian, both atavistic and modern, on show; that and a prevailing theme of love, whether it’s spurned, lost, mourned or unspoken.

Once more unto the breach, Vukovar cast augurs or reflect, mooningly on the past; channeling various vessels from beyond the ether as they prowl the shadow world in pursuit or articulating a vision of dark arts experimental drama. As with the previous Monument LP they recorded with the gloom luminary Michael Cashmore, Vukovar find congruous soul mates in their choice of collaborators, Hero and Morris; attuning those individuals equally mysterious and supernatural leanings and illusions to the ambitious Vukovar mysticism.

Cremator is a death knell; the end of one era and setting in motion of a new chapter: whatever that ends up looking or sounding like. It just happens that they’ve bowed out in style with, perhaps, the original lineup (of a sort) most brooding masterpiece yet. Long may they continue, in one form or another.





Words: Dominic Valvona