UMUR
"Working Class Demon" is the debut full-length studio album by Norwegian avant-garde rock artist Yurei. The album was released through the Adversum label in 2010. Yurei is a one-man project created by Bjeima (real name: Bjørge Eide Martinsen), who performs all instruments and vocals on the album. Bjeima is also involved in several other avant-garde/black metal projects like Alfa Obscura, Delirium Bound, and Manimalism.
Stylistically the material on "Working Class Demon" is carved from the same wood as the dissonant, dark and gloomy avant-garde rock/metal of fellow Norwegians in Virus. It´s a sound pionered by Ved Buens Ende, but stripped from the black metal elements of that group. The atmosphere is depressive, dense, and often abstract, which is also reflected in the lyrics. It´s relatively minimalistic music featuring only guitar, bass, drums, and haunting/deranged dark clean vocals (and the occassional sparse use of keyboards and xylophone). There´s a dark semi-jazzy touch to some of the tracks too. Artists like Bauhaus, Holy Toy, and Joy Division could also be mentioned among the influences, although it´s clearly Virus who has served as the major influence on Yurei.
So it´s safe to say that Yurei won´t win any competitions if the goal was to release something unique sounding, because I´d argue that Virus has already released albums which sound a lot like "Working Class Demon", and there are actually a lot of other contemporary artists playing a similar style too, although some of them add a metallic black metal element to the core dissonant, abstract, avant-garde rock style (artists like Whirling, Kailash, and Apocryphal Voice).
"Working Class Demon" is a relatively long album featuring 11 tracks and a total playing time of 60:39 minutes, and considering the one-dimensional and generally minimalistic nature of music, it could have felt like a listening experience which was a bit too long, if Bjeima hadn´t included tracks like "Velvet Demon" and "Suicide Shitcom", which are slightly different in style and provide some needed variation to the album. Upon conclusion I´m a bit biased towards "Working Class Demon". On one hand it´s an almost blatant clone of Virus music style, but on the other hand the quality of the material is high throughout and the album also features strong musicianship and a well sounding production. I´ll let you decide if you can live with the clone factor and rate this with a 3.5 star (70%) rating, which is what I deem it deserves based on the overall quality of the release.
