Death In June - "Heaven Street", live Glasgow 1983 and "Fall Apart", live Belgium 2002I meant to post a bit more often, but a deathly cold February, subsequent illness, and an overall lack of desire to accomplish anything led to me shutting down for awhile.
Maybe not strangely enough, I listened to alot of Death In June's recorded output during this time. I've found this band both fascinating and annoying on a few different levels. The name has a creepy cool ring to it, earning stares of disbelief from anyone asking what I'm listening to. The militaristic / historic / ritualistic imagery of their cover art at times seems calculated (and what doesn't seem calculated years after the fact?), but often conveys a post World War 2 European feel to it. Alot of the cover art employs the use of statues, which are often symbolic of authority and power. I'm not going to address the accusations of Nazi imagery used on DIJ's records other than to mention that most of the icons that the Nazis used were appropriated from centuries old designs as well.
The music itself varies between folk, industrial and post punk , depending on which record you're listening to. While I'm sure it's not historically accurate, I always feel as if the songs are being discreetly sung by middle aged men on both sides of the wall in Berlin, hidden from the watchful eyes and ears of the KGB and their Western counterparts. Many of the songs convey an age of darkness, where people are living in cities of ruin, destroyed from within and bombed from above; all hope has been crippled, and one has to ask if there is a reason to go on.
It's great to be back.
postscript: Almost all of Death In June's recorded output is available through iTunes and eMusic. If you're interested, it's a good place to start and it supports the artist. That doesn't do much for us common folk who wish to actually have the CD in their possession (good luck finding certain titles at a reasonable price elsewhere), but reissues of back catalogue items are not uncommon.
