The brilliant fifth studio album displays continuum of futuristic visions for this Swiss trio

The Young Gods is a rare breed: Swiss mavericks should have been the Kraut-rock pupils but turned to be the inventors of Industrial Rock, pioneers of Cyber Metal, purveyors of all strange sonic things and all, revolutionary at the time – sans guitarist. Ministry and Nine Inch Nails might be feted (the product of the Imperialistic US culture’s might) but they’ve only filled in the zeitgeist clues in the rock’s crossword puzzle.

The trio has been knocking out defiantly unpredictable sounds since its inception in 1982 in the funky town of Geneva, injecting valiant samples into some incredible noisescapes, marrying electronic ambience with the Weimar’s cabaret legacy, technical precision combined with heavy sounds of such dynamics to make a speed-metal guitarist retire to a padded-cell. The group’s latest album, ‘Second Nature’, released last year, is a high-energy electro fabric of tough beats, hypnotic loops, ominous vocals and post-techno zeal – which bodes very well for a characteristically full-on live set they’ve been presenting all over Europe this summer.

Waiting for Franz Treichler, the triumvir of this troupe, the reporter is observing the soundcheck: drummer Bernard Trontin and keyboards operator Al Comet instantly fill the empty hall with the sound of the world falling apart: its values, ethics, aesthetic of shallowness, addiction to trivia, slavery to consumerism… In a soundbite – the sound-track to the Fall of the Western Civilisation due to its life-credo being – the art of spending.

“We’ve always been in an underground situation,” Treichler illuminates on the working method, “but that’s the way we like it. We’ve never wanted to join the mainstream, it kills creativity. You are so restricted and can’t really be involved in all aspects of your art; we want to arrange our photo-shoots, design our covers, have full artistic control. Business has also changed and if you sign with a major, it’s like giving your wallet to somebody else.”

Clones harvest karma

The Young Gods is avant-garde for the taste discerners: a musical equivalent to Margritte’s paintings – it never is what you observe but constantly defying perception. Imagine a crossroads where Kraut-rock, metal, Mozart, industrial, acoustic, Weill and The Doors converge in a package habitually spitting in an almost dried-up well of clichés. This is Metal that is Heavy on intelligence, passion and rockness, where rock element’s spiritual home is EU rather than the USA. Music without frontiers, dissecting restrictions on imagination to fit some little clique’s requirements. Not just the purpose-rock, alike Korn or Limp Bizkit, but a much broader picture that currently Nine Inch Nails, Fear Factory and ballads triangulate.

“It’s been five years since that last album,” Treichler observes in his meticulous English, “time full of problems. Our previous deal ended, our gear was in New York, drummer left and we felt it was a sign for a change. We did one instrumental records, ‘Heaven Deconstruction’ (1997), found a new drummer, Bernard, rehearsed him, gathered some money for recordings, looked for the record company… The usual, you know, and if people think we’ve been away for too long doing nothing, we’ve been doing things, believe me.”

Red water

TYG are all about bumping killer grooves, tempestuous beats, frenzied melodies with keyboard riffs Tony Iommi would be very proud of. They loop, bleep, squeak, repeat phrases to submission, it is a mesmerising spectacle live and an aural feast in your ears. Originally delivered in French, “Because it felt natural,” Treichler remarks but, tellingly, “English have taken to us almost instantly while French took several years longer.”

Tonality and structures of the next millennium, yeah – the post XX century culture, for about the last 15 years of it. There is too much arid music around, the report sighs.

“There is room for optimism in music,” Treichler disagrees, ”because there are people with ideas and they only have to choose how they gonna do things. Technology has progressed so much that it is amazing what you can do. You can always be creative with whatever you touch but it is so easy now. Outside of stereotypes… We are sonic nomads.”