62 minutes, 27 seconds

VNV Nation
Futureperfect

Listening to VNV Nation feels like a guilty pleasure. The songs are either ridiculously anthemic or just-this-side-of-embarrassing sentimental. They use swelling strings that not even In the Nursery would have touched 15 years ago, and the optimistic, bubbly keyboards almost make Ronan Harris's minor-key vocal lines sound cheery and uplifting. But damn--some of the songs are great. Even on this album, which initially struck me as a bit overripe compared with Empires or Praise the Fallen.

I saw them live in Seattle a few years ago. Harris was a huge ham on stage--way more personable than any "industrial" musician has any right to be--but the show was energetic and alive in a way that many other bands in the genre can't match. Most of it was played from DAT, but percussionist Mark Jackson still exuded a convincing physicality, and Harris's strong voice came through clearly even in the murky acoustics of the smallish club.

There's a part of me that doesn't want to like VNV Nation, but there's a larger part of me that can't help it.

Also today:

62:26 Dense Vision Shrine, A Voyage of Imagination
62:24 Clock DVA, Buried Dreams
62:23 Land, 1988-1997
62:22 Vidna Obmana, Passage in Beauty
62:21 Infact, Fatal Error
62:21 Object, The Reflecting Skin
62:19 Front Line Assembly, Hard Wired
62:19 Hocico, Wrack and Ruin (CD 1 of 2)