Published on Mar 12, 2001
DISCLAIMER: I did not voluntarily review this disc. It’s Chris
Thelen’s fault. Really. Send the hate mail to him.
(Editor’s note: Never mind, I have plenty of my own.)
I suppose I was the most suitable person on the “Daily Vault”
staff to review this on reflection, as I have played role-playing
games — including White Wolf Games
Vampire: The Masquerade ™ — for many years. I spent
five years playing on-line White Wolf games; while I don’t quite
remember when
V:tM came out, I do remember when
Mage: The Ascension ™ came out, so I suppose I have
some history with the game.
One of the things I learned in playing online White Wolf is that
ninety percent of the players out there range from barely mediocre
to incredibly bad. The vampire genre, in particular, seemed to
attract a large percentage of idiotic, misanthropic lunatics whose
sole reason for playing a vampire was to act like a two-dimensional
antihero, a blend of superficial cool and posturing, soap-opera
angst.
Know what? That pretty much describes this CD, too. Ninety
percent crap and ten percent interesting,
Music From The Succubus Club is at its best a fascinating
look at vampire culture expressed through goth, industrial, techno,
and dance music forms, and at its worst the most painfully inept
expression of vampire kitsch since
Fright Night II.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some good moments on this CD, most
notably The Cruxshadows’ “Deception” with its moody violin line,
Sunshine Blind’s “Cold From Fever” (which has a great instrumental
bridge), and Bella Morte’s “Fall No More”, the best thing on the
disc with its crystalline production. Unfortunately, those are all
the moments there are, and it goes rapidly downhill from there.
After those tracks, the most amusing thing on
Succubus Club is the liner notes, and that should be some
sort of universal red flag.
I’m going to be gentle and not take apart the rest of the disc
track by track, both because I don’t believe in unnecessary cruelty
(I suppose if I was a vampire, I wouldn’t play with my food) and
because someday perhaps a few of the worst artists on the disc
might want to switch genres or styles… and if Alanis Morrisette
can do it, anyone should be allowed to. But there are a lot of
adjectives I wanted to use in this section, so as a public service
I provide the following list to be applied wherever you’d like:
monotonous, repetitious, trite, posturing, poorly produced, poorly
sung, poorly played, dull, shallow, superficial, hilariously inept,
awful, and about as likely to make me be interested in vampire
culture (which has several valid points, and please don’t consider
this a condemnation of it) as having the last name of Van
Helsing.
Please. Save yourself the trouble. This CD is marketing, pure
and simple, an attempt by a mediocre gaming company to shore up a
dying game. Even if you are into things nosferatic, it is not worth
your time. Save your money for a couple of old Bauhaus CDs or
something. Drive a stake in
Succubus Club and move on.