Gary Numan – Berserker – 1984
After 6 years and 7 albums Gary and Beggar’s Banquet parted ways. Why not? They barely promoted the last album and the one before that only slightly more. How fickle this industry.
So he started Numa Records, went back in the studio and came out with Berserker.
How is it? Well, thank goodness all that jazz-electro fusion is gone. This is a big, bold heaping pile of industrial noise. Predating Nine Inch Nails by some time there is no way Reznor hadn’t heard this record. A lot of synth musicians were playing around with these sounds, even Sparks found themselves so far in love with their keyboards that they got lost in a miasmic pit of redundant faux-industrial over-production.
Songs like “My Dying Machine” come dangerously close to sounding like Harold Faltermeyer but that was the sound of the times, yes? “Cold Warning” starts off promising but crumbles under the weight of it’s own self-aware gravitas and length. Dammit, Gary, cut these tracks by about 90 seconds each, please! And when he does return to the bass driven jazzy sounds on “Pump Me Up” the whole affair just feels tired and dressed up to sound new but not original in any way
If there is any saving grace it’s on “Child with a Ghost” a song Numan wrote for his deceased-by-overdose friend and original bassist, Paul Gardiner. “Child” is the most beautiful song Gary has recorded since his Telekon days. A piece of brilliance almost marred by a dreadful sax that appears about 3/4 of the way in.
Grade: C-
ASide: Berserker, Child with a Ghost
Blind Side: The Hunter, My Dying Machine
DownSide: Pump it Up, Cold Warning
