The Very Best of Pain

Raism is the continuation of the project formerly known as Diabolos Rising and consists of Magus Wampyr Daoloth of Necromantia handling synths, and Micca of Impaled Nazarene handling the throat laceration duties. For those not in the know, which is I suspect a great number as this project seems to have gone almost completely unnoticed, Diabolos Rising/Raism is an industrial duo, with DR leaning more towards the electronic/experimental/noisy/goth side of things while Raism aims for a simplistic guitar based approach with nods to a few modern borderline industrial acts using strings, such as KMFDm or Ministry. Raism have probably disbanded at this point, but they do have a full length called "Aesthetic Terrorism" which I have yet to obtain that was released a year later than this short MCD.
This is really rather endearing. The music is so completely and utterly simple that it makes a band like Darkthrone and their later works sound virtuostic. Kind of. I could see this boring a lot of people, but some silly part within me really enjoys the music of this duo, though as this is the only Raism release I have I'm more familiar with the Diabolos Rising incarnation. Anyway, what we have here are five songs of grumpy, tongue-in-cheek, moshable or even danceable, simplistic industrial metal driven by catchy doodling keyboards and some of the most basic guitar lines i've ever heard (sampled, every one of them, I believe). As with Diabolos Rising, and Impaled Nazarene, the lyrics take a completely over the top approach and deal mostly with sadomasochistic sex, sodomy, domination, killing just for the hell of it, and other charming family oriented issues. Of particular note is the song "Alienation", which may be my favourite due to it's insane speed and groove and the cool synth/drum machine break after which Micca shouts with glee "one two three four!" and "I am fucking God! I am fuckign Satan". The last track seems to take a more obviously humorous approach lyrically, and features the cool refrain "what kinda hell is this anyway? Am i dreaming or what?" The vocal phrasings on this whole release are extremely cool and they'll get you chanting along in no time, especially the silly intro to "Killing Machine", which has Mikka snorting "die, die, die, diediedie, die, die, diediedie, die, die, diediedie" along with a thumping drum machine beat. The synths are the final ingredient; they are minimalist in the extreme yet they add to the masochistic groove that these guys are so good at. If you can get this cheap, like I did, I recommend giving it a listen. It's very short, so it may even keep some of you anti-industrial people amused for a few listens. I don't know if I find this as much fun to listen to as Diabolos Rising, but it's close, and it has a groove and catchiness that DR often lacked.