Poison the Vicar – Affront

Poison the Vicar is the solo project of Brandon Gordon. Based in Shanghai, Gordon mixes industrial, EBM, darksynth, darkwave, and more into a cohesive slaughterhouse of hardened electronics. His first single ‘Vision’ featuring guest vocalist Corrosive Candy utilized elements of italo-disco and was remixed by Qual. His follow-up ‘Scourge of the Earth’ followed in the steps of new beat while his third single ‘Wedding Wings’ is an industrial blast. This time, however, Poison the Vicar has tapped into early industrial and EBM on ‘Affront’. It’s only fitting, too, to have the legendary Claus Larsen perform vocals on a track such as this. The result is a booming and chaotic industrial powerhouse that can be a bit messy at times. 

Metallic drums and kick drums are what’s displayed first on ‘Affront’ alongside some distorted vocal samples. This brief twenty-five second intro is then cut off by Larsen’s vocals which can be best described as harsh whispers. The track takes on an almost militaristic march during its three-minute and thirty-five second runtime with two breaks in between the noise that help keep the song fresh. My main complaint about ‘Affront’ is that it’s often hard to distinguish the many layers from one another. Whether done on purpose or not, it’s disappointing knowing that there’s some solid old school industrial lying underneath all the noise that’s hard to make out. 

Nonetheless, ‘Affront’ is a solid track that will surely make both old and new rivetheads stomp to their heart’s delight on a dancefloor. I think that Poison the Vicar could have easily avoided the negative by either removing certain elements of the song entirely or by mixing things a bit better. Either way, what we do have is enjoyable and is but a taste of his debut album “Necrotic Pose”. Seven out of ten. 

This review was commissioned through our Ko-fi page.