Solar Fake – Enjoy Dystopia

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Solar Fake - Enjoy Dystopia

Album facts

Release Date: February 12th, 2021
Label: Out Of Line
Genre: , , ,
Discogs: Solar Fake – Enjoy Dystopia
Partially sounds like: De/Vision, Mesh
Final score: 3.8 stars

Solar Fake’s new album ‘Enjoy Dystopia’ is to be released on 12th February and I can’t believe it’s been more than three years already since ‘You Win. Who Cares?'. Last year’s events have prob­ably shaped and influ­enced ‘Enjoy Dystopia’ in a par­tic­u­lar way and what can I say? At least some­thing good came out of 2020 with this album!

You can expect the typ­ic­al Solar Fake mix of harsh beats, Synthwave melod­ies and in-your-face lyr­ics that makes every single one of their albums worth listen­ing to, only this time, there's a little sur­prise in store for us. Just like the album title and the very fit­ting art­work prom­ise, the ten tracks on 'Enjoy Dystopia' invite us to have a closer look at the dif­fer­ent shades of our dystop­ic, destruct­ive and unmer­ci­ful society.

'You need the drugs'

The album open­er ‘At Least We’ll Forget’ is a per­fect intro­duc­tion to the dystop­ic world described through­out the whole album. Its lyr­ics pic­tur­ing people des­troy­ing them­selves while abus­ing of and even­tu­ally tak­ing oth­ers down with them, the song’s pace and music­al struc­ture remind me of the over­all style on ‘Another Manic Episode’. I could very well ima­gine this song as an open­er for their next tour or a fest­iv­al gig.

You’re my destruc­tion, get out off my head
Lyrics from 'At Least We'll Forget' by Solar Fake

‘I Despise You’ takes up the same theme of ‘At Least We’ll Forget’, but in a dif­fer­ent way. Up-tempo beats vary with a piano melody in the chor­us and the bridge, which makes the over­all atmo­sphere of the song, des­pite the very dir­ect and in-your-face lyr­ics, less aggress­ive but rather bleak and sad. The voice dis­tor­tion in the bridge stresses this feel­ing and reminds us that hatred and des­pise can be too strong to for­give anything.

This Pretty Life’ was the first single to be released and offered a per­fect sneak peek to the album's top­ics. The song accuses the abund­ance of drugs tem­per­ing with our brains, mak­ing us unable to make out what is real and what is not, while build­ing our per­fect little world of fake emo­tions, rela­tion­ships and feel­ings. While the ori­gin­al elec­tron­ic ver­sion is undoubtedly very good, I can dearly recom­mend listen­ing to the piano ver­sion on the single release because it gives the top­ic a whole dif­fer­ent and more dra­mat­ic streak.

This pretty life – a shattered vow, and noth­ing is left to blow
Lyrics from 'This Pretty Life' by Solar Fake

The next song ‘Arrive Somewhere’ takes up speed again with its beau­ti­ful Synthwave ele­ments and faster club beats. Also, we can hear a few piano sounds here and there, seem­ing to under­line the resolve and hope­ful­ness in the lyr­ics: No mat­ter how heavy the clouds may lie on our heads some­times, there is always a pos­sib­il­ity to step for­ward from the wall we’ve been retain­ing ourselves to.

Addicted to destruction

With the next song, we are bru­tally torn out of the beau­ti­ful dreamy atmo­sphere of the pre­vi­ous track. ‘Es geht dich nichts an‘ (= It’s none of your busi­ness) is the only German song on this album and I was pos­it­ively sur­prised about how well it works. Sven Friedrich’s voice sounds a lot dif­fer­ent here, espe­cially because he is not really singing the verses but rather speak­ing out the words in quite an aggress­ive style, which fit the lyr­ics very accur­ately. His spit­ting out the words slightly reminded me of ‘Fuck U’, a bonus track on ‘You Win Who Cares?’.

The over­all style of ‘It’s Just Who You Are’ comes off a lot softer than the pre­vi­ous song with a more min­im­al­ist­ic and yet inter­est­ing style. Percussions and a few synth ele­ments in the back­ground open up to a faster chor­us that does not hold as much force or aggres­sion com­pared to oth­er songs on the album. According to Sven Friedrich, the second single of the album “is about unpleas­ant and slimy people who per­man­ently try to manip­u­late their envir­on­ment“, and the lyr­ics do indeed remind us to take our dis­tance from these manip­u­lat­ive people try­ing to mess with our brains and drain our energy.

I won’t let you fuck with my brain
Lyrics from ‘It’s Who You Are’ by Solar Fake

If you missed stronger beats so far, ‘Trying Too Hard’ won’t dis­ap­point you. The pound­ing of the mid-tempo, harsh EBM beats per­fectly accom­pany the lyr­ics, which expose self-centered, atten­tion-seek­ing people as pathet­ic because they are try­ing too hard to be someone they are not just to please others.

All out of hope

The next song ‘Implode’ reminds us of how import­ant it is not to keep everything to ourselves because it is already hard enough to deal with the chal­lenges of the out­side world. I really liked the synth and per­cus­sion vari­ations through­out the whole song who reach their peak when Sven screams out ‘You’re gonna weep and die alone’ after repeatedly singing ‘The cut’s so deep’.

Things you tried to for­get and erase from your brain keep return­ing instead
Lyrics from ‘Implode’ by Solar Fake

The mid-tempo per­cus­sions and synth melod­ies of ‘Just leave it’ pre­pare us for the end of the album, both music­ally and con­tent-wise. The lyr­ics about missed chances, pass­ive­ness and ignor­ance seem rather fatal­ist­ic because it is clearly poin­ted out that we can­not undo the mess we caused in the past.

‘Wish Myself Away’ is the finale to ‘Enjoy Dystopia’ and reminds me a lot of ‘What If There’s Nothing’ on ‘You Win. Who Cares?’. The slow, car­ry­ing rhythm and the beau­ti­ful synth melody in the chor­us under­line the hope­less­ness and loneli­ness depic­ted in the lyr­ics. You want to get out of the hor­rors of this world and this life, but you can’t get up because you are afraid to fail again. As the song’s melody slowly fades away, you are left with this depress­ing image of the inner con­flict between want­ing to get away and being power­less to do so.

For all-time fans

I must admit that it took me a bit more time to get hooked to Solar Fake’s ‘Enjoy Dystopia’. Their last album ‘You Win. Who Cares?’ hav­ing become one of my favor­ite ones, it was dif­fi­cult not to draw too many com­par­is­ons or be too crit­ic­al. Still, after listen­ing a few times, ‘Enjoy Dystopia’ has fully con­vinced me, and I can warmly recom­mend it to every­one who has known the band for a long time and appre­ci­ates their music and song-writing.

Even though we all miss see­ing the guys from Solar Fake on stage and are crav­ing to exper­i­ence this spe­cial feel­ing of com­munity on con­certs and fest­ivals again, let’s share this album with our friends in the mean­time, listen to it in our homes and enjoy dysto­pia togeth­er!

Track By Track Rating

Solar Fake - Enjoy Dystopia
Solar Fake – Enjoy Dystopia
At Least We'll Forget
I Despise You
This Pretty Life
Arrive Somewhere
Es Geht Dich Nichts An
It's Who You Are
Trying Too Hard 
Implode
Just Leave It 
Wish Myself Away
Recommend
This Pretty Life
Arrive Somewhere
Wish Myself Away
Weak
(Nothing to report here) 
3.8

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  1. 4.1

    Well I strongly agree with you in many areas but not all…

    [ BACKGROUND:

    By YWWC, SF cre­ated a per­fect atmo­sphere for all of us to face our own dark­ness. We’re humans, ‘Hope’ is sth like Oxygen for us; YWWC was there to suck out every bit of hope from your world, leave you vul­ner­able and alone to face your darkest insec­ur­it­ies. Anyone listen­ing to tracks like ‘Sick of You’ could prac­tic­ally like feel his rage towards them­selves. Also oth­er tracks like ‘Anything You Want’ were there to mean whatever you feel it means… 

    For me, I was caught off guard when he said “you’ve gone out to date, so des­per­ate to mate with some­body straight”
    Well I have no idea what he meant by that line, but what it meant to me was deep… at time, it was the most obnox­ious fact about me.
    Now when I look back to it, he prob­ably meant “so des­per­ate to just mate with sb, as soon as you can?!” But any­way, on the next verse he slapped me with ‘you don’t even real­ise you’re hid­ing from your­self’ and that was it. I was suc­cess­fully F*CKED

    I was left alone, hanging to his words, listen­ing closely and feel­ing his dis­ap­point­ment toward my own self, feel­ing his dis­gust, anger and despise. 

    So, for per­son­al reas­ons YWWC, was con­stantly hunt­ing me until the moment that I gave in, I didn’t have any more strength to ignore those dark spots, I had to face them…

    I was lying there, I could have ran away again, but some­how, “my own feet couldn’t carry me…” 

    So I’m in tears once again, shar­ing this here, because I’m just ‘name­less’ and everything is easi­er this way… ]

    1. At Least We’ll Forget
    – The melody is a plain and old at first but then it gets stronger around the course
    – again a very dir­ect open­ing, noth­ing much to say it just makes you ready for the rest…
    But com­par­ing to Sick of You, it wasn’t that strong

    2. I Despise You
    – The beat may sound a bit bland and boring.
    – However, the lyr­ics… “I really des­pise you, BAD enough NOT to fuck it up” is any­thing but ‘bland’ it makes you think again (I was like, ‘well, hello there again’)
    So in sum up, for the strong lyr­ics, it deserves more than 3.5

    3. This Pretty Life
    Okay, I have a lot to say about this one… frankly, I loved the single but I just feel like it’s not in the right place on the album. Like, it shouldn’t be there, it fucked my mood a bit… I don’t know, the track is obvi­ously strong, the lyr­ics is catchy and clean but if we’re rat­ing the ALBUM, it’s not good, at least in my opin­ion… if it was a single I would have rated it around 4.8 but here… nah

    4. Arrive Somewhere
    Well, this track is the main reas­on why I felt the need to give some sort of a background.
    – Honestly, It goes very well with the whole concept of the track and everything is in its right place
    – Sooo Lyrics? Remember me lying down defence­less? Being des­per­ate to run away? But my own legs wouldn’t carry me? Yeah… sud­denly, I wasn’t hear­ing Sven any­more. It was my beloved one, hold­ing a hand for me, to just get up and maybe fight? Fly? Get up and get over? I don’t know, I just felt it…

    5. Es Geht Dich Nichts An
    So if it’s not obvi­ous, I’m not German (I’m try­ing to learn but I just can make some stu­pid sen­tences like ‘Die katze ist schön” 🤦‍♀️😂)
    But the music could have been bet­ter cause the mix ver­sion was way more appeal­ing, but by trans­la­tions I read the song was per­fectly fit­ting there unlike This Pretty Life…

    6. It’s Who You Are
    – Electronic and fas­cin­at­ing! (I can’t con­nect with its music video, though)
    – But the LYRICS, again, I was HUNTED, he was my beloved one from 3 years ago, he was singing the same words, he brought me back to my miser­able days before YWWC (ugh I hate that person)

    7. Trying Too Hard
    – I LOVE THIS MELODY, Such an strong beat really! (However it’s of course based on per­son­al taste but I think it was pretty in sync with the concept and lyrics)
    – For once I wasn’t being beaten up by his words… and the lyr­ics seems less per­son­al (almost like how sick of you was)

    8. Implode
    – Again some per­fect, spe­cial melodies…
    – lyr­ics aren’t as touchy and deep… it seems like a per­fect sequel to ‘Trying Too Hard’ (but not as music­ally appeal­ing as TTH)

    9. Just Leave it
    – Wise, the beat is keep­ing up with TTH’s style while slow­ing it down a bit, its a per­fect bridge…
    – Lyrics? Honestly if it was before “Arrive Somewhere” It would have been even more fant­ast­ic, but any­way, nice try to give me a chance to run again, but as I told you, MY OWN FEET WILL NOT CARRY ME

    10. Wish Myself Away
    And finally… =)))))))
    – Perfectly fits with the atmo­sphere of the lyrics
    – Let’s just not talk about it… I feel like, talk­ing about it will just spoil it, just, FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. 

    Bye.

    Breakdown
    Leave A Review
    At Least We'll Forget
    I Despise You
    This Pretty Life
    Arrive Somewhere
    Es Geht Dich Nichts An
    It's Who You Are
    Trying Too Hard 
    Implode
    Just Leave It 
    Wish Myself Away
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At Least We'll Forget
I Despise You
This Pretty Life
Arrive Somewhere
Es Geht Dich Nichts An
It's Who You Are
Trying Too Hard
Implode
Just Leave It
Wish Myself Away
Final Score