Time is out of joint. This brave new world of ours slipped into paralysis and froze hand in hand with our compassion. Nothing is as it once was, we have opened our eyes to an erratic, unstable era that has wiped consistency away like chalk off a board. Yet, solace can still be found in an album like CLAN OF XYMOX’s latest offering, the aptly-titled “Limbo”. Not exactly because the prevalent themes give reason to hope. But because we can take refuge in a sound that was always there for us when all else went back to black. Enter Ronny Moorings, ever the workaholic. Here’s a pioneering goth figurehead that simply cannot do without music. More than ever before, however, “Limbo” is imprinted with the unrest of its creator. He’s channelling lost tunes for a lost time, a doubtful, wistful, thoughtful dark wave manifesto, born in the very heart of lockdown. Resignation and fear, apathy and anger, sorrow and pain are no unknown variables in the equation of this Dutch wave wizard. However, in reverberation of a raging pandemic, they radiate an altogether different intensity. “Brave New World”, “Lockdown” or “The Great Depression” are the names of these sermons for a nightmarish present, each and every one of them a monumental, dramatic, intimate track carrying the world on its shoulders albeit its introspective nature. Maybe this is also due to their time of creation but these new sorrowful songs are easily among the most intense moments in the long career of CLAN OF XYMOX – spearheaded by mighty manifestos of melancholy like “The Great Reset”. Here are songs like a cleansing shower of rain, like a light in the depth of night – “Limbo” is a rescue boat braving the flood tide of life. While more and more people are pointing a quivering finger to scapegoats and falling for the tricks of extremists, Ronny Moorings is like a figurehead of prudence, telling of the things that go wrong in this world with elegiac serenity. Thus, “Limbo” not only is the essence of a world turned upside down; it’s an extraordinary record that effortlessly keeps of with the high standard of recent years and adds a stellar new chapter to a story that was already begun in 1984. Yes, we may be in limbo, in the vestibules of hell somewhere between here and no- where. But we are not alone. And days like these, that’s all that counts.
