Qual
Love Zone
Fabrika Records
William Maybelline’s music as Qual has remained quite fluid since its emergence as an offshoot from his work as half of Lebanon Hanover over a decade ago. While you could broadly call the project’s sound electro-industrial, the actual flavour of the various EPs, albums, singles and remixes has varied from sludgy mutant EBM, to Neue Deutsche Todeskunst theatrics, to down the pipe dark electro of the classic variety. New LP Love Zone is no different in that regard, while also bringing to the fore some of Maybelline’s more delicate and nuanced sensibilities, which have often been absent or obfuscated by the murkiness and the intensity of Qual’s music.
Which is not to say that there’s anything particularly gentile or lowkey here; Maybelline’s aggressive dramatics are a key part of Qual’s identity in whatever substyle a given song happens to be exploring. Hence, when called upon to be cynical and biting to sell the nimble EBM of “Scroll Your Brains Out”, he goes all in on both distorted growls and an affected monotone, serving up contempt in unpalatable fashion and lending the track its sardonic edge. When working an electro-darkwave template on “For a Moment of Happiness” he slides into a seasick warble that fills out the song’s minimal arrangement of programmed drums and repeating synth figures, an over the top choice that ushers in a choice passage of gnarled, gothic guitar. Growling, moaning or yelling through a cloud of distortion (and sometimes all three, as on the squealing and acidic “Beyond This Madness”), Maybelline doesn’t ever undersell or shy away from being vocally extra.
That vocal excess is countered by some of the more minimal and restricted arrangements we’ve heard from Qual, especially in comparison to the dense flanging heard on the preceding Techsick EP. Look to the cleanly rounded synth bass that drives “Express Elevator To Hell” (yes, complete with Aliens samples) beneath Maybelline’s wounded bark; the synth toms and stabby harmonic pads which adorn the core bassline never overwhelm or compress the arrangement, creating a mood we might call clinically tasteful were it not all bound together by anxieties over generational brainrot.
Speaking of which, the technological repulsion/attraction theme in Qual’s work, which goes back at least to 2019’s Cyber Care, is underlined more strongly on Love Zone than ever before, and goes beyond the titles of “Tech Neck” and “Scroll Your Brains Out”. Hearing Maybelline groan and croon “let Windows XP answer all your dreams” or “Netflix and chill is on the way” with all of the moribund gravitas one might expect in Das Ich or Sopor Aeternus tunes about the suffering which sits at the root of all existence (don’t worry, that’s still a major theme in Qual’s work). But that seeming contradiction between pure, universal pathos and arch cultural specificity is the paradoxical space in which Qual has thrived as a post-industrial organism; as always, Maybelline gets to have his rotting silicon cake smeared with ichor frosting and eat it, too.
