Kindly Stop For Me

With the original Chainsuck members no longer in her grasp, vocalist and founder Marydee Reynolds returned with a sophomore album that utilized the substantial talents of their original Wax Trax champion, Chris Connelly, programmer William Tucker, drum guru Bill Rieflin, and session bassist Solomon Snyder, fresh off Smashing Pumpkin James Iha's 1998 solo debut. With what amounted to a supergroup of sorts, Chainsuck's Kindly Stop for Me unleashed another wonderfully ambient slab of gothic industrial atmospherics. Breathless and breathtaking across an incredibly complex set, it swings nicely between the opening punch of "Pornstar" and the moody "Anything but Dead," leaving the slow swing style of "Murder of Heart" to catch listeners with its whip-smart lyrics. How often does the exquisite word "vehemence" (here wedded to "anger melts") appear in pop? The experience is repeated across Kindly Stop for Me, as the balance shifts from one ambient plane to another, while "I.S.O."'s guitar crunch levels into the lazy "Swimmer" before "Blood Across the Sun"'s drum beats the album out the door, and incidentally sees Rieflin step out from behind his kit to take a turn on the ivories. Little known, and so often overlooked, Chainsuck occupies that dark space between late goth shoegazing and early industrial melody — providing a peaceful counterpart to the admittedly brilliant Wax Trax hit-'em-hard-and-fast school of music.