By: Ilker Yücel Editor Maniacal clowns, dance-crazy zombies, and sex-crazed pirates are all par for the course for a delightfully twisted collection of dark cabaret musings from Hellblinki. With a name like Hellblinki, one can immediately visualize what sort of twisted and bizarre form of music the band must be capable of. True to their name, Oratory features a buffet of sonic strangeness that conjures images of demented clowns in a perverted circus, laughing maniacally as the fires of hell engulf them, with ringleader Andrew Benjamin preaches his sordid and silly tales from a malicious altar. In a scene filled to the brim with electronic stimulation, it's almost gratifying to hear Hellblinki's brand of cabaret madness, with "The End" kicking off the proceedings with the sound of a film projector and a muffled introduction reminiscent of a scratchy vinyl record setting the stage for the album, transporting the listener back to the silent film era and giving way to a thumping drum beat, stabbing guitar chords, and a shrieking violin. Benjamin's whimsical yet malevolent vocals guide us into the audio/visual cornucopia while Valerie Meiss' operatic wails add a despairing unease that never quite lets up throughout the album. "Bella Ciao" - a folk song repurposed by the partisans to fight fascists in WWII - comes like a cross between cabaret and Mariachi music with a crooning trumpet and Meiss' Italian vocals while "Drums" is quite simply... drums, chockfull of layers of tribal beats, with Meiss' banshee voice hovering like a ghostly presence. There's a certain amount of classical dance floor flavor at play on Oratory as "Ruckus" lightens the mood slightly, sounding like swing music for zombies, while "Tango" is indeed as its title suggests, those trumpets once again giving the song a Mariachi-esque quality and Meiss belting out a fine performance. The accordion and slow cadence in "No Place to Go" could easily put one in mind of walking the streets of Paris by moonlight, while "River" is an extended slew of distorted chords and reverberating percussion that fades into a shimmering ambience, almost industrial in its mood, though definitely not out of place given the eccentricity of the album. Adding to this bit of industrial flair is the abundance of interludes, many of which either feature a fractured assortment of samples - some of which indicating political undertones - or recorded phone messages that sound as if taken from the ranted musings of a scraggly redneck, although they were actually left over the course of several months at Augusta, GA's NPR station. Also an intriguing element of Hellblinki's music is a knack for the irreverent, rebellious, and debaucherous, especially in the lyrics to "Wicked World" as the chorus calls on the listener to "Get up off your ass and raise some hell," and in "Can be Free" as Benjamin growls "I'll take what I want to satisfy all my needs / I'll have what I choose and I'll take it for free." While Oratory may not deviate dramatically from past albums by the band, when they went by the moniker of The Hellblinki Sextet, their brand of dark cabaret deserves praise for its effective mix of horror show histrionics and circus-freak sideshow exhibition, at once unsettling and hilarious. Indeed, Andrew Benjamin leads his band of rogues with incredible bravado on Oratory, making for a wondrously enjoyable if disturbing time.

Recorded by Andrew Benjamin at his home in Asheville, NC and at Southern Cycle Works in Augusta, GA Track 13 recorded by Asa Leffer live at The 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA Found sound and field recordings discovered, compiled or created by Andrew Benjamin The world influences on this Asheville, N.C. sextet are absolutely staggering; everything from Russian folk to Italian concerto to Americana (and most everything in between) all find themselves present and accounted for, albeit all of the above given a more than punk edge aesthetic. Appropriately enough, the group itself describe its sound as a "Three Penny Opera meets Sesame Street ... with punk rock experimentation and a southern drawl," which, if one must be forced to categorize the band’s sound, is probably as fitting of a description as any other. Think Gogol Bordello, with an emphasis on European cabaret, and you're getting a little bit warmer.

"The End" kicks off things with a charismatic and slightly evil sounding Andrew Benjamin (singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist) leading the band in a dark cabaret-esque tune, accompanied by Ian Moore on violin and Brad Lunsford on bass. It is easy to imagine the singer Benjamin as Lucifer himself, complete with a circus top hat and a cane in one hand, inviting the listener to join him in the depths of the underworld for the rest of eternity to come. Lyrics like, "Look down in this deep dark hole/beneath the ground, here's a ticket to a land below / ...Follow, follow, follow me" only help to reaffirm the above mentioned image that much more. From this point on, things simply get weirder (and much more wonderful) as the album progresses.

"Kerosene" finds the group playing in an early 20th century bluesy style Americana, complete with dobro guitar, piano and Tom Waits-like vocals, while only two songs later the band completely switches it up with "Bella Ciao," a traditional Italian folk song played without the slightest bit of smugness or sarcasm. The lovely Valerie Meiss uses her operatic voice to full degree on the later, creating one of the absolute highlights in all the 23 tracks on an album filled with glowing songs. The Hellblinki Sextet is without question one of the most unique, gifted and flat-out fun bands to come out of the region in a long time. (Self-released)