When This No Longer Satisfies
Daddy’s Got A Gun
Prettier Things (Second Offense)
Collapsing Sun
Sometimes, Just Sometimes
Submit/Succumb (Vocal Version)
Fear Becomes Complacency (V.2: The Stain)
Refuge In Duality (Be My Enemy)
No On Can Hear You
When This No Longer Suffices (Wertham Mix)

Fire in the Head is back!! I screamed this from the ninth floor of my des res council flat to the ants walking below and garnered not one look up in my direction. Total and abject apathy was shown. This is more likely down to the fact that I’m perceived / considered to be a person with extreme mental health problems who shouts a lot from skyscraper balcony’s and not down to the artist in question...the mighty Michael Page. He who has released copious recordings on cd and cdr format…I’ve just run out of fingers and am now onto my toes to keep count…and someone that I’ve reviewed in the past for this very site. Some of the reviews I think he may have liked. Hope so anyway. Feedback should be a two way thing. Builds a bond between reviewer and artist that lasts until the first shitty review. That bond won’t be broken, by me anyway, today. For Fire in the Head is back!!! Note the extra exclamation for effect. Time to rejoice once more.

People often wonder what purgatory is like. You’re dead and your poor soul is in temporary suffering until finally all sins are purged and you’re allowed to sit by the shoulder of God. Well I don’t know what it looks like but I bet it sounds like a lot like "Be My Enemy". The ten tracks on this latest excursion down old extreme power electronics way is everything you expect it to be. Perhaps even more so for this time Michael has nailed it sonically. Surging white noise riding the crest of the damnation wave. Electronic music as a form of aural torture. High decibel frequencies so intensified and dense that overload of the brain is inevitable. The screams of the artist mimicked by the listener as pain thresholds are stepped over and crushed. Respite from the assault ever so brief before recommencing with even more ferocity. The background ambience barely discernable above the unmitigated clamour. Music as punishment sternly doled out and gratefully accepted. A Pandora’s box for the unwary and ill informed. The sounds unleashed a squirming mass out of control causing chaos to all within its path.

This is the sound of Michael Page. Rage and despair brought kicking and squealing into your home. How it differs from his past efforts is a hard one to call. Think of "Be My Enemy" as a natural progression from the previous releases where everything that had gone before was merely building up to this release. Where the cumulative ideas finally merge together more coherently and cleanly making for an opus of grand intensity and design. Michael Page is back. Fire in the Head is back. Purgatory to delight the twisted corrupted sinning masses.

ANM