A Chaos of Desire

In many ways the sister release to Ashes, down to the similar cover art and the parallel sources of inspiration (the Paula thanked in Ashes' liner notes for "caring inspiration" here gets credit for "destroying my faith"), Chaos ratchets up the lyrical intensity even more strongly than before. Given how intense Rosenthal generally is anyway with his words, this may seem a hard task to accomplish, but one listen to the lengthy, majestic album centerpiece, "The Hypocrite Is Me," will confirm it — Herrera delivers a lyric of deep self-loathing with command, while the music backing him is an intense series of rumbling electronic tones matched at the end by a great, gently reverbed violin solo from guest performer Vicki Richards. Another number of note is "Tear Love from My Mind," a piano-driven piece that provides a gentle showcase for Julianna Towns, the main female vocalist on the album, who has a slightly wider range than Kenny-Smith but generally provides the same haunting singing approach to Black Tape's material. Herrera gets another excellent moment for himself with "Pandora's Box," a slightly rockier number for the album, but not by much. As is par for the course with Black Tape records, many guest performers appear throughout the record, including Black Watch violinist/singer J'anna Jacoby, providing only strings here, and longtime Rosenthal collaborator Pat Ogl singing and playing guitar on "How Can You Forget Love?," a quietly stately, simpler number that is also one of the more memorable.