"Harvest Of The Innocent" - Cleopatra records and why they are scum

Like a fucking warrior I have to present this article to somebody or anybody somewhere still close to the war. It is probably still of major interest to those last remaining few survivors here who still truly walk among us... stay dead or just enjoy at your own risk. Yes, I used to be John Bonham, you know... but then I have to be Rob Halford all over again... fucking Discharge... dead Iron Maiden!

The frequently rather flimsy and somewhat unserious reputation of the American Cleopatra record label continues to disgust fans and insult artists alike with unbeleivably crap artwork, but they may be getting better, according to some fans and random eyewitnesses alike... With their unforgivably shoddy and generally nauseating habit of releasing and packaging so many of their CD's in crap computer artwork so laughably ugly and so unforgivably cheap and tacky looking that their otherwise generally unedible obsession with sleazy gothic script or primitive science fiction fonts still clash and blur in spindly digital collages, their trademarked computer generated style lending their many releases the unique Cleopatra look. Often mixing random or obscure biblical or mythological imagery to create images of some kind of cosmic or profound interest or value, the typically spidery line artwork and uniquely artificial color schemes on many Cleopatra releases are easily considered just as tacky and substandard to the gifted as to the mad, as many of their generally far simpler outer space type covers prove, often being just a crazy looking collage with a big floating head somewhere, or just some kind of clunky spaceship image or a stupid computer generated robot motif, or even some kind of big empty meteorite storm type thing, a decent composition seems to equal some kind of blurry inertia on most of their cheaper looking releases. The US label first reared their head in the early 90's with Hawkwind founder Nik Turner's rerecorded "Sphynx" album, Cleopatra also housing industrial hardcore pioneers Pressurehed for their three classic and well packaged albums, and while Cleopatra's frontier attitude to the mass market and in-house approach to their product admirably being as DIY as anything else equally mainstream existing in the industrial, psychedelic or gothic underground at the time, their independent role in the record industry certainly lending the label an extent of credit and credibility with such a star roster of artists such as Nik Turner, Psychic TV and Chrome. Despite their otherwise interesting reputation as a label in all their healthy and crass commercialism, promoting their broadened and streamlined genre of industrial rock and beyond to a market so ready for their product and vision that there is no way they can fail, while the underbelly of Cleopatra's otherwise visionary role in the US record industry and the underground music scene in general remains reflected in their blatantly tasteless sleaze machine recycling of the underground just to line their pockets for a quick fix off the commercially marketable chunk of modern underground off which they leech off this brand of subculture, this modern equivilant of human fallout to be cynically and cheaply exploited in the wake of mass marketing, to be systematically consumerized like and exploited like a bunch of fucking jews by a bunch of fucking jews in buddhism peddling their otherwise reputable and adult product being continuously packaged and repackaged in pitiful and cheap artwork to their increasingly thriving juvenile market eating out of their hands much to the disgust of an older or wiser group of fans and artists, and as with so many of Cleopatra's numerous dodgy cash-in compilations and crappy reissues floating around in stores as some kind of indication of their real intentions as a ripoff operation of profiteers appearing as something of an amateur phenomena when it boils down to the bare facts, as a label catering so much of their potentially interesting quality product to the less gifted of music fans with alot of cheap looking garbage not only insulting the standard intelligence level of the average connisseur or collector of quality music with flimsy looking reissues and cheap compilations, but as a label Cleopatra openly serving up most of their trash product to this kind of low brow high school halloween scene and down to a gutless idiot level of parody of the cutting edge culture which they claim to promote, and as if such a shamelessly cheap and rickety looking underground scene really exists or ever has existed, then it looks like Cleopatra seem to make some kind of bizarre or drunken claim to it in the mass clearance bins of shopping malls and second-hand record stores all across America. While Cleopatra as a label still demonstrate their otherwise misplaced intentions and dishonest interests with an attitude of record disregard of integrity so staggering in its mass harvest of the innocent that it still demonstrates that as this still reluctantly respected and increasingly celebrated label's checkered past and rather flimsy reputation and rank amateur attitude still remains embroiled in some kind of perverted or polluted ideals still somehow rooted in an almost childlike artistic innocence and interest in quality music, Cleopatra's original vision of course being founded in a very narrow cultural segment of the music market which still only speaks for the label with some amounts of respect still intact in the wake of all their shoddy rip-offs and bum deals, their otherwise disrespectable record of terrible taste and unfashionable tendencies ever present since their conception, Cleopatra at their worst reaching record highs of disgust and disrespect, cheapening not only the industry in general, but also so many of their artists with their somewhat laughable and dodgy reputation, a label known to fleece the underground music scene as often as they can and in as many ways as possible and without any regard to common human decency or real interest of the fans, they sure run their operation as best they can without a shred of honesty, but as we all know, with such a ragtag roster of artists and such an array of completely crap releases under their belt, inbetween the odd artistic gem or the rare shimmering demonstration of genius, they still fucking suck like the maggot infested pile of dead idiot liar goths from America they truly seem to be to most of us who still like a bit of fucking music. Sieg Heil!

article (c) 2002, Charlie Yuga

image (c) Christian Mumford 1998

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