Deceit

The funkiest soundtrack for a nuclear holocaust. I don't even understand how an album can be so disturbing and abrasive, yet filled with genuine bangers at the same time. This Heat definitely deserved a space on the original list on account of being one of the most influential and forward-thinking bands of all time.

Deceit is a very early post-punk album by This Heat. I must have missed it somewhere as it's a true classic. It takes a few times listening to appreciate the high pitched vocals and more experimental songs at the end. Still "Paper Hats", "Triumph", "S.P.Q.R." and "A New Kind of Water" are a joy.

This Heat's 1981 experimental album *Deceit* is surely a suggestion that will have all the wimpy users / listeners exclusively interested in "conventional" music recoil in horror -- pretty much in the same way those sorts of listeners recoiled in horror faced to Robert Wyatt's *Rock Bottom* or the Einstürzende Neubauten debut in the original list. I expect the global score for this suggestion to reach a similar abyss, and it turns out that this vertiginous plunge has already started to happen with the first gradings gathered for it... As This Heat state it themselves in the deliciously atonal harmonies of "Cenotaph": "History repeats itself". It's hard for me not to express my contempt for those sorts of listeners still being so close-minded after having already listened to more than a thousand albums of all styles in the generator. No matter how hard you try educating them, some people's palates will forever remain immune to weirder flavors and aromas. If a 5/5 grade for *Deceit* sounds ludicrous to you, maybe there are ways to admit that what eludes you doesn't necessarily imply musical failure, and therefore deserves a benevolent (or at least neutral) grading. That said, how can those users NOT perceive you need the "ugly" shenanigans at the start of the song I just referred to earlier ("Cenotaph") to make its middle section -- suddenly switching to relatively more harmonious turf -- slap so hard! 60%/70% of what I love about music -- whether experimental or not -- is a question of dynamics, whether inside an individual track, or in a whole tracklist (the 40%/30% left is my partial taste or distate for certain types of harmonies, simply put). And goddamnit, you may find the music in *Deceit* off-putting, but you can't deny how dynamic it is! Since I have recently left a couple of aggro and near-edgy reviews on this app (blame my tired state these days, maybe), I will try to exert some restraint and not express my spite too much, though. What can I say? I know the music on "Deceit* is extremely challenging, and that it is unafraid to paint some "ugly", disquieting, unsettling strokes in your mind, yet I just can't help finding such music wonderful. It's wonderful, *because* it challenges you and your preconceptions, because it opens a thousand of doors you didn't even know existed before you start listening to it, and also because it's not only daring, it's also hypnotic -- which may send you to the most beautiful trance, in spite of how dark the whole thing is. That sort of trance-like state is a million miles away from the truly "bad" albums in both the original and the users list (whether experimental ones, such as Captain Beefheart's *Trout Mask Replica*, or blatantly commercial stinkers, like Backstreet Boys' *Millenium*). Contrary to those latter two examples, what *Deceit* harbors is true passion, genuine inventivity, and a care for expressing real and sincere human emotions beyond the "difficult" surface of the music. And this from the real "songs" to the zaniest "musique concrète" instrumental interludes found within the tracklist (that damn kazoo orchestra on "Triumph", ha ha!). One just needs to perceive how "out there" but also committed to the task at hand main vocal performer Gareth Williams was on this record to understand how persuasive This Heat's music could be. Your loss if you can't sense this in the man's howls, shrieks, guffaws, pleas, and yelps. With the right set of ears, attuned enough to the peculiarities of the music, you can indeed feel a passion for unadulterated life in each and every second of this album, from "Sleep"'s perverted lullaby up to the lively, elated and unmistakably poignant "A New Kind Of Water" (an absolute fave of mine -- my gosh, how heartrending that central verse in the song is!). And you can't underestimate how groundbreaking, forward-thinking and even influential the other main tracks of this record are. The gritty, abrasive crunch arpeggios and other guitar work found in "Paper Hats", "SPQR" and "Cenotaph" are for instance foretelling the future of experimental rock music like nothing else before them -- from Sonic Youth to Butthole Surfers, from Young Fathers to black midi, from Vietcong/Preoccupations to Squid (something *Trout Mask Replica* -- decidedly sterile when it comes to effective influence on future acts -- never really pulled off). The rumbling basslines in "Makeshift Swahili" also point to later noise acts such as Shellac or Lightning Bolt. You simply can't underestimate the potential influence or prophetic power of this noisy band. Finally, there are interesting topical undertones in both the music and the lyrics. Like a gentle surrealism barely hiding a deep-seated anxiety about nuclear war and the annihilation of civilization. Take the military whistling and uneasy layers of flutes on "Independence", for instance... The way they pile up over dub-adjacent basslines and organic Dead Can Dance-adjacent traditional-sounding percussions speaks volumes about the post-apocalyptical message here. And that's not even counting the lyrics merely reciting the American Declaration of Independence, in a performative manner that may or may not be ironic -- ironic from those Brits because the USA would be one of the superpowers plunging the world into darkness; and non-ironic because maybe the band considers the words of the declaration have now been betrayed. The whole thing -- music and lyrics -- feels like receiving a transmission from a very desolate place in a very dark future...And those sorts of 'undecided', WTF? moments also underline the unsolvable enigma exemplified by each nook and cranny of the overall musical offering -- one which sounds dirtied and demented indeed, but whose sheer angst, power of evocation, and textural ambition haven't aged a day. As I personally often do with every bunch of genius musicians bold enough to go against the grain and defy all conventions and musical rules, I will now bump up what would normally be a 4/5 mark to a perfect grade. This is to set the karmic balance right, you see. I only "cheat" like that for madmen, freaks and other sensitive / creative souls such as the ones heard on *Deceit*. If more folks like that existed in the world -- instead of the usual so-called "rational" fuckers in charge -- that same world would be a better place, maybe heaven itself. And this even if the music they play sounds as if it's coming right out the gates of hell. You sometimes need to plunge into the abyss to grasp the real power of divine light. Here's me hoping that a lot of users in here do that. And many thanks to the one who thought of this quite extraordinary record. 4.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 5. 9.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 4.5) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 112 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 117 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 259 ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown

Sounds like the individual components of a Cream album fell to pieces and reconstructed themselves in a jagged, unpredictable manner. Incredibly experimental for the 80s, and feels so immediate and modern as a result – not every piece works or justifies its runtime, but the LP as a whole is incredibly textural and exciting. A shame the band dissolved so early into its run, would have loved to hear more from this outfit. Incredible add, thank you for bringing this to everyone’s attention and highlighting what the list should be about.

The 2.61 (current) global rating doesn’t suprise me, but this is a cult classic. Something all its own that I think everyone should hear

Certified classic

I quite liked the variance and experimental nature of this. There is some clear skill behind the noodling. 3 stars from me easy. I’m taking two stars off to counteract the reviewer who gave this 5 stars and wrote the most annoying, self-important, blow hard 9 paragraph review I’ve ever seen in 5+ years on this website.

They lost me when they said most of the tracks were cobbled together from improvised sessions. Slightly better than giving toddlers instruments and recording the outcome but not much.

Album #32 (1001 challenge extended): "Deceit" by This Heat (1981) "Deceit" is the second and final studio album by English experimental band This Heat. Experimental rock and post-punk are the Wiki-listed genres. The songs were assembled from largely improvised recordings with themes of fear of nuclear war and imperialism. The songs also have varying degrees of sound quality as the band wanted to make it sound as though the record player was exploding. The bandmembers included Charles Hayward (vocals, drums, keyboards, guitar, bass, tapes), Gareth Williams (vocals, bass, keyboards, tape) and Charles Bullen (vocals, guitar, clarinet, drums, tape). The album was well-received by critics with Pitchfork ranking at #73 on their best album of 1980's. Chanting of "Go to Sleep" opens the song, you guessed it, "Sleep." Tribal beats, a humming sound. A weird guitar which develops into a melody. Vocals develop with handclaps. A haunting, subdued tone. A Middle Eastern acoustic guitar starts "Paper Hats." Screaming vocals and random sounds. A bass and drum groove develops. Yes, experimental. They get a rock beat and a post-punk guitar going in the wonderful "S.P.Q.R." A harmonized vocal chorus takes the lead. More percussion and the song builds. A song about the cyclical nature of history and the influence of the Roman empire. The next song "Cenotaph" takes a gloomy look at nuclear war. Ominous synth and guitar strikes. Weird idiosyncratic beats. Hypnotic. Ringing. And a chaotic end. The chanting comes back full force in "A New Kind of Water." Drums pounding. A psychedelic background guitar. The song changes a bit as the guitar and bass becomes melodic, the pace picks up and a lead vocalist takes over. Dramatic. A comment on the environment. Stark with a minimalist approach to instruments at times. Experimental with random noises and sounds. Layered percussion. Ringing post-punk guitar riffs. Lots of chorus vocals, harmonized, chanting or in the lead. An overall ominous and foreboding tone reflecting the lyrics on nuclear war, environmental decay and the inevitably of history negatively repeating itself. I saw a critic comment this as "existential dread." Very apt. And you know what, this album is great. The songs I mentioned are all outstanding. The overall tone and its effect made me play it immediately again. So, if you're post-anything fan (punk, rock) or like interesting experimental rock music, I highly recommend this very you. 5 out of 5

This album is out there a ways, and like a lot of the stranger albums on this list, I’m here for it!

This is a difficult listen. Not because of the subject matter. Nuclear war was just a part of growing up in the 1980s - as intangible and as nerve-wracking as "going out with a girl", although with the difference of nuclear war being slightly more likely. No, it's difficult to listen to because it has been designed to be difficult to listen to. Given it does exactly what it says on the tin, you kind of need to give it the (Ron)seal of approval. Doesn't make it easy to listen to though.

Spiky and sinewy, dark and discordant. That it was inspired by fears of nuclear holocaust checks out on even the most cursory sort of listen (at least accordingly to this veteran of the nuclear-countdown-clock era). Pretty sophisticated-seeming for 1981, if not The Fall or The Cure, necessarily. And it's overreachingly arty at times, and undeniably all over the place – though compares favorably to, say, Suicide on the one hand and Devo on the other. Not sure it belongs on the list proper – and one's nowhere near ready to claim it one of the top 100 albums of the '80s – but still glad to make its (somewhat discomfiting) acquaintance – so thanks. recommender.

Post-punk genius

This is pretty cool. 4 stars.

Not bad

Weird, but not too bad

Certainly notable, and I was hearing shades of later experimental and new wave sounds that marked it out as ahead of its time. Some irritating and obtuse elements too however.

Experimental rock, post-punk. No me ha gustado... Un 2.

Did not work for me. My personal rating: 2/5 My rating relative to the list: 2/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No

Rating: 5/10

Experimental rock, post-punk. No me ha gustado... Un 2.

I did not understand this and it also didn't capture my attention. If it was purely improvised jamming, that would explain a lot.

I had to wait all day to listen to Deceit and when I got to it it's a load of absolute horseshit. What a mess of a record. 1.

Well that sucked

This sounds like it was an accident