Reviewed by James Tweed

While Steve Taylor is much in evidence with his Warner Alliance debut 'Squint' and corresponding worldwide concept video, a cover version tribute album, a two-CD career retrospective on Sparrow and live appearance in a town near you, the other members of the late and much missed Chagall Guevara have been no less busy. As Passafist, studio alter-egos of guitarist/producers Dave Perkins and Lynn Nichols, and ace programmer John Elliott, they have produced what is probably the first genuine hardcore industrial Christian album. Taking their cue from the likes of Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails and Henry Rollins, they have gone for the jugular with a recording that is not for the faint hearted. It came about when Perkins was asked to write and record a song for a European horror movie that subsequently never got made. With "Christ Of The Nuclear Age" in the can, the intrepid trio set about making the rest of the album. A seven-track epic, its centrepiece is the almost 11 minutes of "The Dr Is In", that samples heavily from Stanley Kubrick's cold war satire 'Dr Strangelove' and is the key track on the album. Indeed, "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" is the album's subtext. Add an intriguing cover of The Stones's raunchy "Street Fighting Man" featuring Perkins' heavily distorted vocals to the mix and the peace-loving Passafist (bad pun) have produced an original, satirical and, at times, shocking album that is not for the complacent. Chagall it certainly isn't.

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