The opening track, “Alone,” from DI AUGER’s most recent release, WHITE LABEL / BLACK NOISE, opens perfectly with a smoothly morose tone that’s merely a taste of the intensity of what’s to follow. The track, a lyrically paradoxical piece about both the resentment of, the need for, the loneliness (almost as though it were an entity) of agonizing self-introspection. From that thick-brick beat opener on through the rest of the album, DI AUGER continue to amp up the chaos that rules a shattered soul, dead heart, and fracturing mind, with layers (of what C. Lefort, the mind behind the madness of this one-man project of wrackingly beautiful and lightless-life Neo Industrial Gothic Rock, as he terms it) upon layers of, well, exactly what he describes it as, though with a definitive classic punk rock edge to many of the songs in both tone and vocals, as well as occasionally presentation and always philosophy. And it’s that mix of elements, all presented in equal measure, that creates a sound nightmarish, beautiful, violent, romantic, haunting, and accurate, often all at once, and to great intense effect. It’s also wholly unique. *(Again I’ve been blessed with another fantastic disc of new, potent, powerful music to sink my teeth into, like some twisted vampire to the most perfect of beautiful swan-white necks – – – ) The topics aren’t merely about the agonies of emotion and devastation wrought by heartless former lovers and those Black Swan-beauty deceivers of night, but also enters into some political territory as well, particularly with the fourth track, “American Voodoo (Flags On Fire),” another poetically worded piece about our “great empire” *(notice no capital letters there), where it is right now, and right where it seems to be headed. Track five, “All That Remains,” is another dystopian tale of what will happen after man finally fully runs amok, very visual and synesthetically pleasing; you feel the twisted world of snapping sense and synapse as it projects itself right out of the speakers to gouge out your eyes and split you in two with its odd blend of Lovecraftian imagery and our blissfully ignorant end-times culture running itself into the ground: “What’s left of the silence of All That Remains?” Who is C. Lefort, now, you might ask? He is a classically trained pianist, whose leanings since youth have always been toward the darker, more dramatic end of the spectrum. Starting with a fondness for BLACK SABBATH in that youth, those influences evolved over the years to also include acts as diverse as SKINNY PUPPY, SLAYER, WENDY CARLOS, CURRENT 93, BASIL POLEDOURIS *(composer of the original “Conan The Barbarian” soundtrack), THE SISTERS OF MERCY, PRODIGY, and GOBLIN, as well as everything in between I’m sure. I also hear a little RAMMSTEIN here and there, especially in “NEIN, NEIN, NEIN.” Lefort has played in a numerous variety of punk and underground “garage style” bands for decades *(which still shows, even through the harnessing of the rest of the technologies that make up this sonic landscape of pure inescapable dread), almost always as percussionist. But he was always a main songwriting contributor to those projects, having much more concise ideas for his own project. Upon finding a renewed vigor for music, C. Lefort became DI AUGER and began to release the material that was solely of his creation, writing, production, performing, and engineering. WHITE LABEL / BLACK NOISE is his third full length release under the DI AUGER moniker. Lefort’s production values are tops, and the time it sounds that was put into this album long and passionate, but the intensity it projects, stabbing you right in that ropey-dopey vein with rusty syringes of mainlined sound will henceforth leave you instantaneously hooked. Gothatronica forcefully yet so gracefully fused with the most brutal aspects of punk rock dystopianism, this is a MUST HAVE for Goths, Rivetteheads, and the Punk set alike. Support DI AUGER you selfish deadbeats. Go buy a copy of WHITE LABEL / BLACK NOISE, and prepare for the upcoming ruination of all. Remember kids, if those bombs begin to drop, just duck and cover. You’ll be fine. DI AUGER ‘WHITE LABEL / BLACK NOISE - Album Review by Vincent Daemon (Intestinal Fortitude)