We Said Destroy - 7''

Following Douglas P.'s guest appearence on Fire + Ice's brand new album "Birdking", he and Ian Read join forces again for this luxurious split single. A metal-painted blue dragon pops out from the white sleeve and the
translucent light blue vinyl of the first 1000 copies are the usual fine package those issues have made us familiar with.

The Fire + Ice track is a traditional song called "The Unquiet Grave", adapted with mastery by Ian Read's magnificent old-wise voice and Mee's beautiful female vocals. The song is evocative and leads us into the ancient Highlands, between Beowulf's battles and Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard".

Death In June's "We Said Destroy" is a terrifying track which, in my opinion, stands marvellously between being really scarying and some kind of leg-pulling. The title sounds as an ironic self-parody, recalling dead memories of the classical "She Said Destroy" in the ravaging years of DIJ's very beginning, and adds a wedge to the mosaic of the band's most experimental and difficult tracks, being on the same level of heavy and disturbing episodes such as "Death Of a Man", "The Calling", "The Wall Of Sacrifice" or "My Black Diaries". The sound of "We Said Destroy" is powerfully industrial, cacophonic, with Douglas' voice unrecognizably whispering in the background, and anxious sampled dead soldiers' voices coming from nowhere. The side ends with a looped burlesque music, which makes the entire track resemble a demented freak circus. Of course this is very far from Death In June's habits, but I believe this is an important evidence of great self-irony and refined intelligence, chasing away the malevolent spirits of seriousness and pompousness which unfortunately haunts other projects of this area.

Simoneh Ragnar Redbeard
June 2000

Contacts :

- Death in June

- Fire + Ice

This split single is available via Tesco Distribution.