Description
PRE-ORDER ITEM — EXPECTED TO ARRIVE BY MARCH 20, 2026, BUT DELAYS ARE POSSIBLE. Any regular in-stock items ordered at the same time (purchased in the same shopping cart today) will be held aside and sent with your pre-ordered goods as one shipment. Orders with multiple pre-order item will be sent as one order, when everything in the order is in stock. If you want the in-stock items you’re buying today to ship immediately, or want your pre-ordered items to be sent out as soon as they arrive here, rather than in a group, you must order them separately. PAYMENT WILL BE TAKEN WHEN YOU COMPLETE CHECKOUT.
Graeme Revell has written a new introduction for this reissue, included in the liner notes. The album came first out on Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien on LP in 1983. Auto-Da-Fé is a collection of SPK’s singles from 1978 to 1979.
The first five tracks, from ’78 and ’79, are basically a scratchy thrashy punk sound, augmented by synthesizers and samples. Guitars grind, electronics screech, and metal is most thoroughly bashed.
The highlight of these early works is the deranged track “Slogun”. The intro to the song, a demented echoing clucking and quacking, leads into a pulverising mechanical grind.
The next three tracks come from 1981, when a new more synth-oriented sound was debuted. “Metal Field” and “Walking on Dead Steps”, ever-so-slightly catchy, creepy, with militaristic overtones. “A Heart that Breaks (In No Time Or Place)”, is the stand-out here, a minimalistic, almost EBM track, as an empassioned female voice narrates the amazingly bitter lyrics, while seemingly random percussion bashes quietly in the background.
The final three tracks date from 1982. On these tracks, a kind of shamanic quality has overcome the music, a tribal, mystical sound come to the foreground. Synth-drum beats hold the songs together, as metallic-percussion injects a hint of randomness and confusion to the tracks.
Vocals are no longer shouted, but delivered calmly, and the synth backing is created through drones, rather than beeps and stabs.
Tracklist:
1. Kontakt
2. Germanik
3. Mekano
4. Retard
5. Slogun
6. Metall Field
7. Walking On Dead Steps
8. A Heart That Breaks (In No Time Or Place)
9. Another Dark Age
10. Twilight Of The Idols
11. Cultureside
