(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

The gothic/industrial dance music of the 1990s found in the Electric Hellfire Club (from Chicago) a sort of artistic reference point.
The project was created by singer Thomas “Thorn” Lockyear (formerly of My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult) and includes Rev Dr Dub (keyboards), Ronny Baleo (guitar), Richard Frost (percussion), as well as the dancer Sabrina Satana. With the 1993 album, Burn Baby Burn (Cleopatra), the group grants maximum respectability to that subgenre of modern dance music centered on the fusion of Satanism and drugs.
The concept opens with the Invocation, echoing the occult rituals of Aphrodite Child’s landmark Satanic rock album 666, blending the fiery distortions of heavy metal with the driving sequencers of the dancefloor. This is perhaps the band’s preferred approach: in Psychedelic Sacrifice it also assimilates threatening synth lines, and in MR 44 it is employed to stage an exorcism in the form of a vertiginous, lurid, and majestic swirl of samples.
The sound is dense and overwhelming, a vortex in which samples and guitar are often lost. The abulic repetitions of the guitar complement the polyrhythmic tribalism of the percussion. The electronics—at times majestically symphonic, at others melodically alienated—the hoarse, malevolent vocals, and the sampled “minor” voices are the true linguistic pillars of the music. Burn Baby Burn is an art of counterpoint in the industrial realm, yielding structures that are far from monolithic, indeed highly articulated, from the oriental-flavored theme of Fall From Grace to the heroic keyboard tones of Where Violence Is Golden.
On Age of Fire, a murky aura is cast by an organ with an acidic timbre and the minimalist drive reminiscent of Suicide. The frenzied crescendo of Electric Hellfire Acid Test is accompanied by sampled bells and choral masses reaching “Beethovenian” intensity. Epitaph closes the album on an almost celestial register, with all instruments and voices contradicting everything that came before.
Immersed from start to finish in sinister atmospheres and tight rhythms, this hybrid of hard rock, acid rock, and techno bears the marks of biblical scourge more than the dark circles of rock hedonism. “This is the age of lust and dark desire...”

Witness the Millennium (Cleopatra, 2002) and Electronomicon (Cleopatra, 2003) resumed their evil saga.