New York’s Android Lust plays a type of industrial-Goth-metal that fans of Trent Reznor, Maynard Keenan, Rob Zombie, Evanescence, and Marilyn Manson would appreciate. Android Lust landed in St. Louis at The Crack Fox, a small dingy, smoke filled, shoebox-sized club on Olive, the perfect place for a show of this type to take place. Their last performance in St. Louis was at The Complex, another club replete with Gothic scenesters.
As eleven thirty approached, the black leather and pleather wearing, tatted up, and eyeshadow smeared crowd assembled around the stage like the hungry living dead and prepared to receive the sacrament of Android Lust. Lead singer Shikhee took the stage, wearing a beautifully detailed, full body leather suit with slits cut out around the waist and arms, and topped off with a delicious leather collar piece. She offered a quiet, almost nervous, “Hello,” and leapt into “Intimate Stranger,” from their August 10 release, ‘Human Animal,’ which starts with a creepy-fat snaking bass line that bleeds into raucous screams, violent guitars, and crushed out drum-noise backing tracks.
Next came “It’s On You.” The tight-nit, dressed up crowd, closed in and swayed with the heavy thrum of drums, bass, and death-thick synthesizers. Third was fan-favorite “Dragonfly,” a cut from 2006’s ‘Devour, Rise, and Take Flight,’ a beautifully layered industrial-techno track with a driving beat and careful, yet seething, lilting vocals and a catchy chorus line.
The set continued with “Body,” a track that has wisps of Tom York if he were abducted by Goth aliens, reengineered and infused with even headier rhythm and abandoned to the vacuum of outer space. The ending of this song was of particular interest because it dissolved from a break-neck pace of digital pops, blips, creamy bass, and distorted vocals into a serene acoustic guitar section that slowly built back up to brooding climax as the drums faded in and the vocals bled from soft and deeply feminine to dark and cutting. As the cut churned on, Shikhee demanded, “Do you understand?” and then screeched, “You just don’t understand!” The audience bopped along and hooted, gobbling the moment.
“Hole Solution,” “Lover Thine” and “God In The Hole” were all played with high fidelity to their studio counterparts, and the audience was held entranced throughout the entire dark synthesizer layered slalom. On “God In The Hole” bassist, Bret Calder brought the thunder of Thor’s hammer and incarnated it in a sick and haunting epic bass line. Guitarist, James Light and drummer, Steve Kefelas thrashed and pounded away respectively in perfect collaboration. Shikhee growled, “huh, ahuh, huh,” to create one of the show’s most ecstatic moments.
The set concluded with “Stained,” and featured roaming synthesizer licks, playful, yet shadowy orgasmic guitar and almost choral vocal styling from Shikhee, that is, until she spat out, “I just want to see you dead,” that split the difference between Goth-industrial, heavy metal, and techno, in a thrilling reach of genre transcendence.
Android Lust left the stage only to return by audience demand and encored with “Unbeliever,” from “The Dividing,” which opened with whispered singing and a soupy techno-synth line that built to include a hearty piano line and a perfection of overwrought thumping drum and bass.
The dressed-to-the-nines audience devoured the show to the bone. An obvious success, Android Lust is the one industrial-Goth-metal band worth catching. Get out and see them.
By William Kyle